When we were reading Invisible Man, we realized that every use of words related to sight and invisibility and color were always very significant sources of symbolism, no matter their context. Therefore, the descriptions of colorblindness in White Boy Shuffle immediately caught my eye. Looking back on Native son, blindness is something that Bigger grapples with throughout the book. There is a huge difference in what these descriptions represent, but they are very racially charged and make up part of the identity of the character involved.
Invisible Man explores "invisibility" throughout the novel and the characters’ traits’ relation to sight is never fully defined. However, we have concluded that it involves flying under the radar and generally being ignored by society. Invisible men are those who are not fully engaged in society as a way to avoid the social burden of their race. As far as we are aware, the invisibility is not acknowledged by any white characters.
Native Son utilizes the word "blind" as a descriptor commonly used by Bigger when looking on various other characters in the novel. He uses it to label people as being ignorant to what was going on in the world around him. Bigger labels his family, Bessie, Jan, and even himself as blind during his adventures. He often utilized it when frustrated, but it always carried a connotation of not understanding the way the world worked.
White Boy Shuffle, as of chapter two, displays a white construct of "colorblindness". Gunner grows up with the white school system pointedly preaching that everyone has to look past race. This is an interesting contrast to the other instances because it represents being so aware of race that they need to try redefine it.
This difference could demonstrate a shift in the problems facing blacks in America between the two time periods. I have barely stepped into this topic and have not come close to doing it justice; how do you incorporate this motif of obsessing over symbolic vision?
I also found this stark difference in the two novels to be interesting. I think that in Invisible Man the black characters are blind, yet in White Boy Shuffle it seems like the white people are blind. Gunner is constantly looked at when the class talks about any african-american topics or history, as if he's the only one that can relate, which although made me somewhat angry to read, I see this happen even today at Uni. This is showing that the white people are blind to the fact that you don't have to be "colorblind" necessarily, but accepting of both colors and not put them into their own categories. The teacher is obviously not actually colorblind if she looks at Gunner whenever addressing black topics, which makes me think that she is actually blind in other regards, and doesn't want to accept it. I think that not everything needs a symbol to represent it, and in White Boy Shuffle, the symbol of colorblindness is taking an important topic to an extreme, and actually counteracting the point. Interesting way of comparing the two books!
ReplyDeleteI think the big difference in these books (and their time periods) is that Native Son and Invisible Man are pre-civil rights, and White Boy Shuffle is post. The concerns of colorblindness in White Boy Shuffle are in fact results of the awareness of the concerns that Wright and Ellison bring up in their novels. While both write about "traditional racism", Beatty writes about the more modern, nuanced, hidden racism that is produced from the culture's extreme aversion to this traditional racism. One of the most successful (and restricting) ideas of the civil rights movement was integration and the idea of equality. However, in Gunnar's world, this idea has been distorted into colorblindness--in the effort for equality, individuality has been de-emphasized, and what is said to be the default is largely based on the white definition of "default".
ReplyDeleteI would definitely agree that these books all a very different view on what it means to be blind. Yet they all seem to agree on two things, the first being that this blindness is harmful. Either resulting in people being mistreated or causing people to miss out on parts of life. The other part they agree on is that the blindness never appears to be intentionally malicious, rather it either just happens, or in the case of White Boy Shuffle is actually intended to be "correct". Its interesting to see that these traits of blindness have managed to survive the civil rights movement and prompts the question of will it ever go away?
ReplyDeleteIt seems that blindness in the White Boy Shuffle is something that seems to be intentionally imposed on the children in Gunnar's school, as if pretending race doesn't exist will erase the centuries of historical context for racial tensions. In Invisible Man, the main character seems to be blinded by certain ideals that have been imposed on him in much the same way. In some ways, Gunnar going to Hillside is a moment similar to the narrator being disillusioned, where he realizes that being black gives him an identity, and that he wants to embrace this identity, similar to the narrator finally understanding his own identity at the end of Invisible Man.
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