Gunnar's college experience

After Gunnar is shipped off to El Campesino Real High School he seems to develop this attitude of indifference almost to the point of apathy in most things. He doesn't really care how he performs on the basketball court; he hides from recruiters and barely attends classes, spending most of his time in the library. 

This attitude carries on to the college process that is initiated when he takes the SAT, shocking the school officials with his high scores. When college recruiters come to talk to him he basically makes a fool of the Harvard recruiter and just walks away. Then he chooses Boston University seemingly randomly after he finds the BU recruiter playing cards with his friends and negotiates for Scoby to come along as well. 

When he actually goes to college these attitudes continue. He only attends one class where he is ridiculed and then suddenly treated as a celebrity and then he ends up leaving the class and stripping naked on his way home. He then allows the entire class to enter his house where he is naked cuddling with his wife. He also doesn't seem to care that much about basketball in college; he only joins the team after he is kicked out or leaves all of the other clubs he was trying. He doesn't think much of his coach and still is amused when the other players get covered in ink, because his hands were inky and he got it on the ball. 

It seems to me as though this attitude emerges as a result of Gunnar leaving his old life behind. He leaves behind Psycho Loco and the gang, leaves his family, he stays with Scoby, but Scoby gets really stressed out and depressed when he gets to college. Maybe I'm just reading too much into this but it feels like something has definitely changed. 

Gunnar the Poet

Having read the first few chapters of The White Boy Shuffle, I think that the most interesting thing for me is the writing style and Gunnar's style of speaking and writing. Gunnar starts out the novel in the Santa Monica culture talking "proper," but the narrative still has some aspects of slang in it, despite the poetic aspects that it also has.

But it gets really interesting when Gunnar moves to Hillside. He is forced to leave behind his "proper" way of speaking and adopt the more slang, street, almost thug language of Hillside. Despite this change in how Gunnar talks he still thinks himself a poet and his style of speaking still has poetic aspects to it. A reader can see this in the conversations he has with Nick Scoby. But the most interesting part to me is when his poetry and his Hillside language meld together. This is first seen at the Shakespearean contest when he goes up, and recites a version of Shakespeare but much more adapted to the style of speech he has learned to use in Hillside. This is increased when he earns his status of poéte maudit for the Gun Totin' Hooligans and for the neighborhood in general. When he is asked to speak at Pumpkin's funeral he delivers a poem full of Hillside dialect, truly displaying the result of this melding. 

As well as Gunnar's language I think that the language of the novel itself is different from that of most novels. Paul Beatty writes it with a much more laid back tone. No real fancy language or flowery styles, to me it makes the book that much better. As well as being kind of laid back, Beatty's writes in a way that allows him to flow fluidly in and out of Gunnar Kauffman's character. His writing meshes very well with Gunnar's style.  

Ethnic Notions

At the end of Ethnic Notions the movie had a little section that showed how far society had come since the time period depicted in the movie. (The movie was made in the 80's so it was a bit outdated)

I was thinking about how far we have come now, as of today, and while it does seem like the more extreme, in your face, exaggerated depictions have died out, it feels like that has brought on a new era of more subtle racism and notions of black people especially. When I think of current views I think of how black people are (sometimes) portrayed as criminals and it brings to mind all of the cases of police brutality against black people. This may not be the exaggerated, blackface and broad red/white lipped minstrel dances but it seems like it is another form of society's (wrongful) notions of black people. 

We also talked about different things that exist today that have a basis in this culture, such as the "eenie meenie" thing. I was really surprised to learn how such commonplace things like that (seemingly) nonsensical rhyme have such dark root. Even things like the food brands (aunt Jemima, etc) seem sto stem from this. Maybe it's nostalgia for things that we learned as children, its just seemed to me that there would be no reason to keep things like that in today's society.