Gunnar's Identity
I found it pretty remarkable that Paul Beatty's The White Boy Shuffle succeeded in depicting a pretty dark and powerful fight against racism in a comedic and enjoyable way. One thing within the novel that interested me the most was Gunnar's struggle of identity and fitting in after first moving to Hillside.
I would say Gunnar is a pretty peculiar character considering his freakish natural ability to play basketball and the way he reacts to different situations. Gunnar seemed to be this embodiment of black culture and stereotypes while also being the opposite. He is amazingly good at this sport, basketball, which black people are stereotyped as being naturally good at, while at the same time being this incredible and studious poet with impressive grades. Usually, these two characteristics would not be associated with each other which is what makes Gunnar so interesting as a character.
Gunnar's struggle with his identity and eventual acceptance and fight for his race was most evident to me during his first few days after moving to Hillside. While in Santa Monica, the reader sees a rejection of black people from Gunnar, when he tells his mother that he doesn't want to go to an all-black summer camp because the people there are "different" from them. This causes Gunnar's mother to move him to the "ghetto", as described by Gunnar.
When he asks a guy on the street living in Hillside where the store was, he is immediately met with a response that essentially separates him from the other black people in his community. He is described as not dressing right and having "white" mannerisms, which makes sense considering he has been living with largely white people for the whole of his life. He struggles to fit in and even alters his speech in an attempt to fit in with the rest of his community. After he befriends Scobe and Scobe calls him the n-word, Gunnar is overjoyed because this simple action makes him feel like he belongs and is one of them. We later see Gunnar go on to stand up for his community in a way at the poetry competition which gains him a lot of credit in Scobe's eyes which further helps him to feel accepted and assimilate.
Gunnar develops from this more sheltered kid with "white" mannerisms who seemingly rejected his own race to feeling at home with black people and black culture, even going on to stand up to the racism against them through his poetry and defiant acts throughout the rest of the novel.
I would say Gunnar is a pretty peculiar character considering his freakish natural ability to play basketball and the way he reacts to different situations. Gunnar seemed to be this embodiment of black culture and stereotypes while also being the opposite. He is amazingly good at this sport, basketball, which black people are stereotyped as being naturally good at, while at the same time being this incredible and studious poet with impressive grades. Usually, these two characteristics would not be associated with each other which is what makes Gunnar so interesting as a character.
Gunnar's struggle with his identity and eventual acceptance and fight for his race was most evident to me during his first few days after moving to Hillside. While in Santa Monica, the reader sees a rejection of black people from Gunnar, when he tells his mother that he doesn't want to go to an all-black summer camp because the people there are "different" from them. This causes Gunnar's mother to move him to the "ghetto", as described by Gunnar.
When he asks a guy on the street living in Hillside where the store was, he is immediately met with a response that essentially separates him from the other black people in his community. He is described as not dressing right and having "white" mannerisms, which makes sense considering he has been living with largely white people for the whole of his life. He struggles to fit in and even alters his speech in an attempt to fit in with the rest of his community. After he befriends Scobe and Scobe calls him the n-word, Gunnar is overjoyed because this simple action makes him feel like he belongs and is one of them. We later see Gunnar go on to stand up for his community in a way at the poetry competition which gains him a lot of credit in Scobe's eyes which further helps him to feel accepted and assimilate.
Gunnar develops from this more sheltered kid with "white" mannerisms who seemingly rejected his own race to feeling at home with black people and black culture, even going on to stand up to the racism against them through his poetry and defiant acts throughout the rest of the novel.
I, too, think Gunnar's development into his own really transcends the idea of rejecting the society that has tried to "white-ize" him (literally in his own family name, and through his racist cop dad) and sell him on some sort of "black kid market". In the scene when he dresses and acts as a minstrel character in a basketball game is really just a middle-finger-up at all these people trying to characterize his identity, as he's kind of like, "here, I'll play the character you want... and dunk on you, too!"
ReplyDeleteYour blog post was very well written. Reading it, I wonder if gunnar represents on some level the conflict of mixed race kids feeling like they don't know how to belong to either culture. Definitely it represents the conflict of having stereotypes inflicted on you, and feeling a weird pressure if you don't fit them, or if you actually do fit them. Race and culture in society is such a complicated topic
ReplyDeleteI also thought this while reading this blog post. Gunnar's inability to fit in after moving to Hillside also goes to show how mixed race kids sometimes don't know how to act in a strictly black community or strictly white community since part of their identity is comprised of having both black and white experiences to draw from.
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