Can Color Be Avoided?

                Already in the first two chapters in The White Boy Shuffle, Beatty dives in and indirectly questions the universal problem asking if it is possible not to judge somebody based off of the color of their skin. Beatty uses the character of Ms. Cegeny—the main character’s third grade teacher--, and shows how she always pounds into the heads of kids should be judged for their “minds” and not their “color”. But through this process Beatty hints at how it is almost impossible in modern America to do so.

                The method which Beatty uses to show how racism is something hard to avoid, is by relating it to something that has embedded itself in the world, such as nature, human eyesight, and mental capabilities. For example, when Melissa –one of the students—reads an article in the class about sunlight, I believe that Beatty purposely left in the part where Melissa says “Dark colors such as black absorb sunlight and light colors such as white reflect sunlight”. He does this to show that even something as necessary and common in daily life as sunlight is not colorblind, but treats blacks differently than whites. Later on in the day the main character goes to the doctor’s office to get examined, and asks the doctor “Our teacher says that we should be colorblind. That’s hard when you can see color, isn’t it?”. Here Beatty is making a metaphor to race, where even though the teacher is asking the students to be colorblind it’s almost impossible when humans can see the color on people’s skin, and sometimes it’s hard not to treat others differently based off of the history that is behind the color of their skin and the stereotypes which come with that.

                In The White Boy Shuffle Ms. Cegeny is a perfect example of the naïve white, patriotic, American who although is under good intentions to try and forget America’s racist past, thinks that it can be forgotten in an instant, in this case by telling 3^rd graders to do so. Like I said before, it is smart to try and change racism in America, but it cannot simply be told to children at a young age. Children should be informed of the racism in America first, so they can understand why it’s such a deep problem, and how much harder it is to change. In result they won’t just think of equality as something that is morally right like washing your hands, but something which is more of a sensitive issue, that might be solved in a couple centuries.

 In Beatty’s prologue, he takes on a pessimistic point of view and implies that it is such of a problem that it will never be solved. Beatty says, “In the quest for equality black folks have tried everything. We’ve begged, revolted, entertained, and intermarried and still are treated like shit. Nothing works, so why suffer the slow deaths of toxic addiction [] when the immediate gratification of suicide awaits [] our mass suicide will be the ultimate sit-in”. I wonder if similar to invisible man, this story will show a transformation illustrating how the main character changes from a fun-loving kid, being taught that everyone is equal regardless of their skin color, to the pessimistic man we see in the prologue who knows it is impossible to erase racism because he has experienced so much of it that it has become a permanent part of the world.