In the novel The White Boy Shuffle written by Paul Beatty, racism is a principal force that /drives the plot and story of Gunnar Kaufmann. In the generality of The White Boy Shuffle, the best course of action to engage the racial problem is through the concept of "color blindness."
The novel focuses on Gunnar's life and his experiences as being a black boy with many identities. In this part of Gunnar’s childhood, he is attending a predominantly white school in Santa Monica, California. At this school, Gunnar is continuously inculcated with the idea of “color blindness.” “Color blindness” is advocated throughout the community in order to alleviate some of the racial tensions. However, with massive exposure to the “color blindness” ideology and the application of this concept in Mestizo Mulatto Mongrel Elementary, the school that Gunnar attends, Beatty addresses color blindness as not a practical method for dealing with racism. This idea of “color blindness” in The White Boy Shuffle exhibits awkward contradictions between the “color” ignorance approach, like with the story of the black and white elephants, and the general color detectability of human eyesight.
With all of the racially-charged encounters that Gunnar experiences, we see that no matter how much the concept of “color blindness” is utilized, it will not change people and society’s perspective toward blacks. The ineffectiveness of this concept stresses the differences between all races. The idea of “color blindness” is basically a new form of racism. The idea says that the only way to eliminate color-oriented issues is by acknowledging the difference between races.
The white society’s ideas and views of black people will never change and Gunnar believes this to be true. He and his race have been trying to get out of this position of inferiority but they have been stuck. Gunnar says, “.. I’m tired of thrashing around in the much and not getting anywhere.” He is not making any progress on how the white people treat him. He is not gaining any social advantage. This is why he feels like he has no will to live. He wants to be put out of the misery that the white people have forced upon him.
Sidenote: The White Boy Shuffle is one of, if not, my favorite book that I have read during my time at Uni. It was so entertaining to read and I related to the story because of basketball. I also loved it because I understood a lot of the many details that make the book so enjoyable. Like the Longfellow quote in the outdoors department store when he still was seen as “white” and using a Longfellow quote makes him seem super white. Another detail that I like is the reference to John Brown. John Brown in the novel is a character who was trying to fire up the crowd so there would be a change. In reality, John Brown led a military attack on Harper’s Ferry that raised tensions that would eventually lead to the Civil War over slavery and equality for black people. Beatty definitely conveys his message and the novel was a great read and I will definitely be recommending this book to many of my friends.
Colorblindness is a strange topic yet it fits into the ironic comedy, if you can call it that, of White Man Shuffle. Colorblindness seems like the White people in the story's way of erasing other cultures under the guise of multiculturalism. Even in the present day, we can see some aspects of this happening in the education system where students are taught the correct way of doing things and are taught mostly White culture and other cultures as a side thing.
ReplyDeleteColorblindness is very important within the novel. When white people talk about colorblindness- lets put it this way- we don't see racist white people talking about colorblindness as a good thing. Colorblindness is something that people think will help people of other races, yet more than anything it will help erase what white people have done in the past, and erasing each beautiful culture. Its all unknowingly though. Scary.
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