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Racial Choice at Century's End In ABSTRACT Title of Dissertation: RACIAL CHOICE AT CENTURY’S END IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE Kaylen Danielle Tucker, Doctor of Philosophy, 2008 Dissertation directed by: Professor Mary Helen Washington Department of English This dissertation introduces the term “racial choice” to describe a contemporary idea that racial identity can be chosen or elected, as can the significance and the influence of race on an individual’s identity. Racial choice emerges out of the shifting historical, cultural, and social discussions of race and identity we have witnessed after integration. This dissertation examines the resulting representations of contemporary black identity in African American literature by analyzing texts that were published in the last quarter of the twentieth century and that feature protagonists that come of age during or after integration. Andrea Lee’s Sarah Phillips (1984), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle (1996) are representative texts that engage racial choice to register how the racial hierarchy has changed in the late twentieth century and how that change affects the African American literary tradition of race writing. In their attempts to write outside of the existing racial paradigm—using white flight, passing, and satire as narrative strategies—the authors test the racial boundaries of African American literature, finding that writing outside of race is ultimately unachievable. The introductory chapter explains the cultural, literary, and scholarly context of my study, arguing that because race matters differently in the late twentieth century contemporary African American literature handles race uniquely. I argue in my first chapter that Lee uses white flight as a narrative form to move Sarah Phillips beyond the influence of racialization and to suggest class as an alibi for racial difference. Continuing this theme amidst the Black Power Movement of the 1970s and the multiracial project of the 1990s, my second chapter analyzes Senna’s Caucasia, which revises the passing narrative form and explores the viability of choosing a biracial identity. In my third chapter, I show how Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle satirizes the African American protest tradition to point up the performativity necessary in maintaining racial binaries and suggests that culture is a more accurate identifier than race. My concluding chapter argues that though the three novels under study challenge racial categories—and by extension race writing—to different degrees, they all use similar methods to point up the shifting significance of race, racial categories, and racial identity. By historicizing attitudes about racial categories, challenging the dichotomous understanding of race, representing the tensions of racial authenticity, and showing the performativity necessary to maintain racial categories, the novels illustrate the traditional boundaries of racial choice and attempt to stretch the limits of the African American literary tradition. RACIAL CHOICE AT CENTURY’S END IN CONTEMPORARY AFRICAN AMERICAN LITERATURE by Kaylen Danielle Tucker Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the University of Maryland, College Park in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2008 Advisory Committee: Professor Mary Helen Washington, Chair/Advisor Associate Professor Kandice Chuh Associate Professor Zita Nunes Associate Professor Sangeeta Ray Professor Bonnie Thornton Dill, Dean’s Representative ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This dissertation has been a labor of love that could not have been completed without the generous support of my advisers, colleagues, friends, and family. I would first like to thank my director, Mary Helen Washington, who worked tirelessly to push my readings of texts and to encourage my critical voice. Her enthusiasm for this discipline and for her role as director helped to make this dissertation possible. Kandice Chuh also supported the vision of my project and helped to strategize its completion. I would also like to thank the other readers of the dissertation committee, Zita Nunes, Sangeeta Ray, and Bonnie Thornton Dill, and other faculty and staff who supported me along the way, such as Manju Suri, Johnetta Davis, and Theresa Coletti. I also received dissertation support from the Southern Regional Education Board. I am appreciative of the friendships that were crystallized through this process. Kenyatta Albeny, Shirley Moody, Shaun Thomas Myers, Robin Smiles, and Christie Redding Williams were excellent sounding boards and provided me with endless friendship and emotional and spiritual support. I would like to acknowledge my parents, Henry and Sandra Tucker, for their generous support of this endeavor and for giving me the freedom to choose my own path. I also thank other members of my family, including Georgia P. Conner, Nelda C. Lewis, Donald Conner, Tamelyn Tucker-Worgs, Leslie Perkins, Donn Worgs, Michael Perkins, Kamel Worgs, and Kamaria Worgs, for encouraging me along the way. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Introduction: The Future American: The “Color Line” and “Racial Choice” at the Millennium ………………………………………………......5 Chapter One: Integration and White Flight in Andrea Lee’s Sarah Phillips . …………………………43 Chapter Two: Racial Choice and the Contemporary Passing Paradigm …………..71 Chapter Three: Satire, Performance, and Race in The White Boy Shuffle ……….103 Conclusion: The Future of Racial Identity and African American Literature …..141 Works Cited ……………………………………………………………………….152 iii INTRODUCTION The Future American: The “Color Line” and “Racial Choice” at the Millennium This dissertation introduces the term “racial choice” to describe a contemporary iteration of the idea that racial identity can be chosen or elected, as can the significance and the influence of race on an individual’s identity. I contend that the idea of racial choice emerges out of the shifting historical, cultural, and social discussions of race we have witnessed in the late twentieth century. These shifts have called into question the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court codification of the one-drop rule, which established that individuals with any amount of “black blood” in their heritage could not claim whiteness. The Ferguson ruling set an enduring precedent of legislating race and privileging whiteness. The idea of racial choice challenges the one-drop rule by allowing such factors as white skin privilege, class allegiance, or a cultural identity to dominate over historical racial hierarchies in the determination of an individual’s identity. This dissertation examines representations of contemporary black identity in African American literature by analyzing texts that were published in the last quarter of the twentieth century and that feature protagonists that come of age during or after integration. Andrea Lee’s Sarah Phillips (1984), Danzy Senna’s Caucasia (1998), and Paul Beatty’s The White Boy Shuffle (1996) are representative texts that investigate the concept of racial choice. I begin with these literary examples because they 1 incorporate the themes of contemporary race identity—the representation of class, color, and culture as stand-ins for race, the performance of race, and the meta- narrative of the literary representation of race in the late twentieth century—that are the subjects of this dissertation. These texts are indicative of a particular cultural climate present at the close of the twentieth century and the beginning of the twenty- first, and the chapters of this dissertation are organized around key historical and cultural moments that highlight the current dilemma of racial identity for the post- integration generation. This dissertation analyzes the anxieties surrounding racial identity for people of color and also clarifies the idea of racial choice—that one can choose his or her own racial identity—that accompanies it in order to identify the contemporary nuances of racialization and to determine those influences on African American literature. Cultural Contexts The idea of racial choice that I am interrogating in this dissertation is a contemporary phenomenon produced by the current political and cultural climate in which “choice” over the impact of race is affirmed for some but not for others. The concept of racial choice also reflects national enterprises to assure racial equality through efforts like integration, multiculturalism, and changing the Census racial categories. These political movements advance the concept of racial choice in that 2 they rely on individuals opting to participate in postmodern systems of racialization. These movements operate on the assumption that individuals can choose to participate in these systems, and as a result, the concept of race will have different consequences. Though this dissertation focuses on a contemporary version of racial choice, the idea of choosing race did not originate in the last quarter of the twentieth century. In the past, racial choice operated primarily through the option of passing for another race, generally blacks or other minorities passing for white. The contemporary version of racial choice is different from passing in that it does not rely on a person hiding his or her race, or pretending to be another race. This difference between past and present practices of racial choice reflects the shifting significance of racial categories present in the last quarter of the twentieth century, as well as the perception that one can highlight characteristics like color,
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