{"id":1930,"date":"2024-01-08T00:45:26","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T00:45:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/?p=1930"},"modified":"2024-01-08T00:45:26","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T00:45:26","slug":"the-limitations-of-contemporary-anti-racism-in-paul-beattys-the-sellout-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/2024\/01\/08\/the-limitations-of-contemporary-anti-racism-in-paul-beattys-the-sellout-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Limitations of Contemporary Anti-Racism in Paul Beatty\u2019s \u2018The Sellout\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Paul Beatty\u2019s 2015 novel The Sellout<\/em> is preoccupied with exposing the limitations of contemporary attitudes towards race. Like all great works of satire, Beatty\u2019s novel draws attention to the contradictions inherent in the social institutions and practices of his own culture through humour and irony. He does so to satirise the idea of a \u2018post-racial\u2019 America, to point out the gap between rhetoric and reality, between the claims of progress in Obama\u2019s America and the reality of the racism that still exists in the twenty-first century.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Chapter Twenty of the novel concerns the building of a makeshift swimming pool. Beatty recollects that at the \u2018height of the government enforcement of the Civil Rights Act\u2019<\/strong> (226) some towns in the United States \u2018filled in their municipal pools\u2019<\/strong> (226) rather than suffer the horror of letting African-Americans swim alongside white people.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

In light of this, the narrator hires someone to construct a \u2018Whites Only swimming pool\u2019<\/strong> (226) in Dickens, surrounded by \u2018a chain-link fence\u2019<\/strong> (226). The reason given for this bizarre construction is that the children of Dickens \u2018loved to hop\u2019<\/strong> (226) the fence and \u2018play Marco Polo\u2019<\/strong> (226) in the Whites Only pool.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The narrator seems to revel that his act of seemly racist segregation serves only to spur on enthusiastic resistance to that same segregation. Beatty indicates here that the reason behind the narrator\u2019s attempt to re-segregate Dickens is ironically so that the people of Dickens will resist it, and in resisting it, realise the already segregated nature of the society that they live in.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

By pointing out the reality behind the rhetoric, that the U.S.A. is still a heavily segregated society despite the end of formal segregation and Jim Crow, Beatty\u2019s novel exposes the limitations of progressive anti-racism. In looking at race from a \u2018colour-blind\u2019 or \u2018post-racial\u2019 perspective, contemporary attempts to address race ignore the history and legacy of American racism, from segregation to slavery. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“[C]ontemporary attempts to address race ignore the history and legacy of American racism, from segregation to slavery”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another incident that exposes the limitations in twenty-first century attempts to address race is The Sellout<\/em>\u2019s parody of Black History Month. In response to the \u2018disingenuous pride and niche marketing\u2019<\/strong> (226) of Black History Month, the narrator converts an abandoned car wash into a \u2018tunnel of whiteness\u2019<\/strong> (227). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The narrator relates how the children can choose between \u2018several race wash options\u2019<\/strong> that include \u2018Regular Whiteness\u2019, \u2018Deluxe Whiteness\u2019 and \u2018Super Deluxe Whiteness\u2019<\/strong> (227). Regular Whiteness includes the \u2018Benefit of the Doubt\u2019<\/strong>, Deluxe Whiteness includes \u2018Warnings Instead of Arrests from the Police\u2019<\/strong>, and Super Deluxe Whiteness includes \u2018Legacy Admissions to College of Your Choice\u2019<\/strong> (227).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Here, The Sellout<\/em> clearly satirises the privilege still enjoyed by white Americans in a \u2018post-racial\u2019 society, but Beatty also suggests the intersectional nature of white privilege. Professor Steven Delmagori suggests that by including the different versions of whiteness, all with their different privileges, The Sellout<\/em> acknowledges the \u2018class privilege immanent to white privilege\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beatty\u2019s critique implies that all white people enjoy white privilege, but not all white people enjoy the same amount of white privilege. In doing so, Beatty \u2018couples the whiteness critique to a class critique\u2019 in a way that points out the flaws in the monolithic view of White Privilege in contemporary attempts to address racism.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

At the end of the novel, the narrator sees Foy Cheshire celebrating Obama\u2019s election. Foy says that America has finally \u2018paid off its debts\u2019<\/strong> (289). The narrator responds: \u2018And what about the Native Americans? What about the Chinese, the Japanese, the Mexicans, the poor, the forests, the water, the air, the fucking California condor? When do they collect?\u2019<\/strong> (289).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dr. Henry Ivry of the University of Glasgow\u2019s School of Critical Studies suggests that this moment encapsulates Beatty\u2019s approach to race in the twenty-first century, in which \u2018race doesn\u2019t exist in a vacuum\u2019, but rather is \u2018a tangled category that intersects not only with other racialized beings but also with class, the environment, and even animals.\u2019 The Sellout<\/em> rejects the narrow parameters of contemporary conceptions of racism to explore the ways that race intersects with class, gender, ethnicity and ecology in order to approach a more robust account of race in the twenty-first century. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The Sellout rejects the narrow parameters of contemporary conceptions of racism to explore the ways that race intersects with class, gender, ethnicity and ecology”<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

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At the end of Chapter Twenty, the narrator travels to Dickens\u2019 local hospital where he paints a \u2018black or brown\u2019<\/strong> (231) line on the wall of the hospital that leads down three flights of stairs, and then to three different locations: \u2018a back alley\u2019, \u2018the morgue\u2019<\/strong> and a \u2018junk-food vending machine\u2019<\/strong> (231). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

These lines satirise the inequalities faced by African-Americans and other minorities in the American healthcare system, with black and other minority people facing lower insurance rates and higher premiums (abandoned in the \u2018back alley\u2019), shorter life expectancy (\u2018the morgue\u2019) and higher rates of obesity and diabetes (\u2018vending machine\u2019). <\/p>\n<\/div><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Five years after the passing of the Affordable Care Act, Beatty’s novel emphasises both the disadvantages that black people still face in the American healthcare system and the discrimination that they face in medical treatment.\u00a0The Sellout<\/em> is preoccupied with questioning\u00a0and exploring claims of racial progress, and suggests over and over that \u2018post-racial\u2019 rhetoric is just a cover for the unaddressed problems of American racism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Bibliography<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Beatty, Paul, The Sellout<\/em> (London: Oneworld, 2015)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

CDC, \u2018Adult Obesity Facts\u2019, 2021 <https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/obesity\/data\/adult.html<\/a>> [accessed 3 Jan 2024]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Delmagori, Steven, \u2018Super Deluxe Whiteness: Privilege Critique in Paul Beatty\u2019s the Sellout\u2019, Symplok\u0113<\/em>, 26.1-2 (2018), 417\u201325<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irvy, Henry, \u2018Unmitigated Blackness: Paul Beatty\u2019s Transscalar Critique\u2019, ELH<\/em>, 87.4 (2020), 1133\u201362<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lee, Paulyne, Maxine Le Saux, Rebecca Siegel, Monika Goyal, Chen Chen, Yan Ma, and others, \u2018Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Management of Acute Pain in US Emergency Departments: Meta-Analysis and Systematic Review\u2019, The American Journal of Emergency Medicine<\/em>, 37.9 (2019), 1770\u201377 <https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1016\/j.ajem.2019.06.014> [accessed 3 Jan 2024]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Century Foundation, \u2018Racism, Inequality, and Health Care for African Americans\u2019, 2019 <https:\/\/tcf.org\/content\/report\/racism-inequality-health-care-african-americans\/?agreed=1<\/a>> [accessed 2 Jan 2024]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The New York Times, \u2018U.S. Life Expectancy Plunged in 2020, Especially for Black and Hispanic Americans\u2019, 2021 <https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2021\/07\/21\/us\/american-life-expectancy-report.html<\/a>> [accessed 2 Jan 2024]<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Paul Beatty\u2019s 2015 novel The Sellout is preoccupied with exposing the limitations of contemporary attitudes towards race. Like all great works of satire, Beatty\u2019s novel draws attention to the contradictions inherent in the social institutions and practices of his own culture through humour and irony. He does so to satirise the idea of a \u2018post-racial\u2019 … Continue reading The Limitations of Contemporary Anti-Racism in Paul Beatty\u2019s \u2018The Sellout\u2019<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1017,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-academic-blog"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p58scM-v8","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1017"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1930"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1942,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1930\/revisions\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.qub.ac.uk\/americanists\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}