Racism in America
‘The charade of a post-racial America.’
March 6, 2016
‘Beatty’s characters do more than acknowledge their racism—our racism. They revel in it. Racism becomes a path to honesty, even self-knowledge. It’s an improvement on the current status quo, at least, better than the denial of the racism that pervades our culture and our institutions. The Sellout tries to make sense of a time in which acts of racism are not as taboo as the acknowledgement that no Americans are actually colorblind.’
[…]
‘Beatty, like his narrator, manages to discriminate against every race at the same time. Each ethnic and identity group is held up to ridicule, the stereotypes taken to absurdist extremes. Some of the gentler (printable) examples include a classification of whiteness in America, ranging from Regular (“Benefit of the Doubt,” “Higher Life Expectancy”) to Super Deluxe (“Military Service is For Suckers,” “All Vices and Bad Habits Referred to as ‘Phases’”); a scene at the Supreme Court in which Judge Sotomayor utters Spanish profanities under her breath and Clarence Thomas’s robe is stained with barbecue sauce; and a social justice organization called “The L.A. LGBTDL Crisis Center for Chicanos, Blacks, Non-Gays, and Anyone Else Who Feels Underserved, Unsupported, and Exploited by Hit Cable Television Shows.” But Beatty directs his most biting satire at liberal intellectuals who boast of racial progress and bristle at politically incorrect language.’
The Daily Beast
