The White Boy Shuffle

Chapter 4 was an especially pivotal point in the novel. We see Gunnar transition from being the "whitest black kid in town" to discovering his innate basketball talent and joining a gang, among other milestones. One thing we considered in class today was the symbolism of this new assimilation, and what kind of theme Beatty is going for--it is definitely no longer the realism Richard Wright presented in Native Son. I think we all came to the general consensus that Scoby is Gunnar's portal to the rest of his life.

The first big thing that was Gunnar's gateway to social accommodation was when Nick Scoby called him the n-word. An interestingly pivotal point in the novel, Gunnar took this as a compliment and sign of acceptance rather than an insult. Even though he was the same color as the people of Hillside, he felt like a total outsider before this moment. It was as if Scoby was saying yes, you are black enough. Gunnar's newfound friendship with Scoby is a fruitful one--within this chapter we see him blossom from a nerdy misfit to one of the most popular kids in town. I think it would only be fair to credit Scoby with this growth.

In this chapter, we noticed that everything seems to be linked in a chain of events. Soon after Gunnar befriends Scoby and realizes he is a pretty cool yet intellectual guy, the class sets off to the Shakespeare competition. This scene is pivotal in that it is the first (and so far only) time we've seen Gunnar be superior to Scoby. Here, we see him sacrifice his attempt at winning the competition for making a simple, yet powerful, point. Scoby is in awe, and later that day on the bus ride home he calls him a "crazy n-----" and invites him to play basketball. When Gunnar picks up the sport and is automatically a basketball prodigy, I couldn't help but wonder if this had some racial connotations. I also found it interesting that, as we see becomes a trend in the book, Scoby is the one who, in a way, christened him into the sport.

However, just as he commits a jaw-dropping slam dunk and gets his spankings for doing so, he heads off to class where he has an epitome that his poetry is still an important part of him. I like Gunnar so far because it seems like both poetry and basketball play an important role in his life, and he hasn't dropped his "nerdier" poetry skill in an attempt to being a more macho basketball player. On the contrary, I don't think Gunnar has found himself yet. He mentions several times that he doesn't even really like basketball--he just does it because he's good at it. I suppose this leads me to wonder what exactly Paul Beatty's intentions with crafting this character are. So far, Gunnar doesn't seem to possess the typical "black boy" mentality. Also, he is found to be ironically bad at dancing, inspiring the white boy shuffle Beatty named this book after and hinting at the bigger theme of this story.