From the beginning of The White Boy Shuffle,
I’ve been laughing, but oftentimes I’d instantly look back and be like, “wait,
should I be laughing at that? I don’t think I should.” It’s undeniable that the
novel in general and Gunnar Kaufman are incredibly funny. But there’s something
that seems a little off with that conclusion - for one, Gunnar’s humor is quite
dark. For another, he doesn’t exactly want to be known for his comedic prowess.
From the very beginning of the novel, Gunnar has
us laughing. He references very dark people and events yet he still has us
cracking up. Even when he’s in the third grade, he’s hilarious. (It does help
that his teacher’s name is “Ms. Ceginy”.) Yet his comedy never ceases to be
quite dark, and it just gets darker as the novel progresses. In middle school,
when some kids beat him up, he refers to it as “getting his overbite fixed”,
and remarks that his doctor said “she couldn’t do a better job if she tried”.
As his own father, a police officer, is beating him brutally during the L.A.
riots, he says his father “transform[ed] into a Senegalese drummer beating a
surrender code on a hollow log”. By college, he’s internally poking fun at his
and Scoby’s depression, and we’re expecting these amazing one-liners and out
from his mouth spills, “let’s all kill ourselves,” or “America is Satan,” and
we’re all like, “heh heh hehhhh…?” We love a funny narrator. But by the end,
it’s like, should we have laughed in the first place?
During a basketball game in high school, Gunnar
dresses as a blackface minstrel character - white gloves, cold cream on his
lips, bent forward snapping and whistling “Old Gray Mare”. The whole gym is
rolling on the ground laughing. His coach is furious. We, meanwhile, are
cracking up, but inside unsure if we should really be laughing. Gunnar’s
performance is a pretty clever callout, but throughout his life, he’s been seen
as a performer rather than an actual human being. From the “funny, cool black
guy” to the “basketball star” to the “street poet messiah”, it’s never left
him. By the end of the book, it’s clear he’s through being the performer, but
can’t find a way for any of his to see him otherwise. By making us laugh, then
saying ‘ha! This is actually serious’, Paul Beatty is really making us think.
