To this day, every blue-eyed person is a descendant of that first azure-eyed person. Similar to skin color, eye color comes down to the amount of melanin, or pigment, that can be found in the iris.

Black people who have internalized racist beauty norms have long yearned for the same — for Whiteness’s metonym, azure eyes, as in Toni Morrison’s debut novel, “The Bluest Eye.” ...