Challenging those who have mistakenly reduced racial identities to an unchanging, fixed category, Paul Beatty encourages his audience to grasp the intersectional process of identity formation in his novel The White Boy Shuffle. Beattys creative imagination and high-academic vocabulary illustrate via the protagonist, Gunnar Kaufman, how to teach and motivate people to be agents of change in the communities, especially with educational opportunities. Beatty illustrates the successes and shortcomings of black leadership and the ways in which the leaders of the black community influence individuals and institutions. Depicting how minorities are marginalized in the educational system, media profits from the homogenization of blacks, and American political apparatus restricts dissenting opinions from minorities, Beattys text covers a variety of issues pertaining to how minorities are treated as second-class citizens in America. The White Boy Shuffle captures how the absence of racial identity discussion by minority leaders and dominant white society in education and leadership is a fatal flaw to achieving change. In an effort to learn and appreciate the complex historical evolution of race awareness, this thesis offers a critique of white America who have unfortunately reduced these multi-layered topics to a simple, inadequate conversation on race in literature. I argue that we must fully comprehend how the presence of institutional racism in the educational system impacts and influences minority youth. In doing so, I explore how minority leadership can positive impact racial identities and make effective strides toward equality in the 21st century.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:MONTANA/oai:etd.lib.umt.edu:etd-12112007-160533 |
| Date | 18 January 2008 |
| Creators | Yaksitch, Emily Monique |
| Contributors | Lynn Itagaki |
| Publisher | The University of Montana |
| Source Sets | University of Montana Missoula |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.lib.umt.edu/theses/available/etd-12112007-160533/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Montana or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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