Race Traitors and Individual Psychology in John Howard Griffin's Black Like Me, Andrea Levy's Small Island, and Igoni Barret

RACE TRAITORS AND INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY IN JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN’S BLACK LIKE ME, ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND, AND IGONI BARRETT’S BLACKASS

2021 MASTER’S THESIS ENGLISH LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE

HUSAMULDDIN ALFAISALI

Supervised by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muayad Enwiya Jajo ALJAMANI

RACE TRAITORS AND INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY IN JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN’S BLACK LIKE ME, ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND, AND IGONI BARRETT’S BLACKASS

Husamulddin ALFAISALI

T.C.

Karabuk University

Institute of Graduate Programs

Department of English Language and Literature

Prepared as Master’s Thesis

SUPERVISED BY

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muayad Enwiya Jajo AL-JAMANI

KARABUK

June 2021

TABLE OF CONTENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS ...... 1 THESIS APPROVAL PAGE ...... 3 DECLARATION ...... 4 DEDICATION ...... 5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 6 ABSTRACT ...... 7 ÖZ ...... 8 ARCHIVE RECORD INFORMATION ...... 9 ARŞİV KAYIT BİLGİLERİ...... 10 ABBREVIATIONS ...... 11 SUBJECT OF THE RESEARCH ...... 12 PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH...... 12 SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH ...... 12 METHOD OF THE RESEARCH ...... 12 HYPOTHESIS OF THE RESEARCH ...... 13 RESEARCH PROBLEM ...... 13 SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS / DIFFICULTIES ...... 13 RESEARCH OBJECTIVES ...... 14 RESEARCH FINDINGS ...... 14 CHAPTER ONE ...... 15 INTRODUCTION ...... 15 1.1. An Overview to Individual Psychology ...... 15 1.1.1. Inferiority Complex ...... 17 1.1.2. Superiority Complex...... 19 1.1.3. Fictional Finalism / Subjective Final Goal ...... 21 1.1.4. The Style of Life ...... 22 1.1.5. Holism ...... 24

1.2. Racism ...... 25 1.2.1. An Overview to Racial Discrimination ...... 25 1.2.2. White Privilege ...... 27 1.2.3. Race Treason ...... 28 CHAPTER TWO ...... 31 JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN’S BLACK LIKE ME ...... 31 2.1. Literature Review ...... 31 2.2. Individual Psychology in Black Like Me ...... 33 2.3. White Privilege and Race Treason in Black Like Me ...... 44 CHAPTER THREE ...... 56 ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND ...... 56 3.1. Literature Review ...... 56 3.2. Individual Psychology in Small Island ...... 58 3.2.1. Gilbert Joseph ...... 58 3.2.2. Hortense Roberts ...... 61 3.2.3. Queenie Buxton ...... 66 3.2.4. Bernard Bligh ...... 69 3.3. The Underprivileged Blacks and Race Treason in Small Island ...... 71 CHAPTER FOUR...... 87 IGONI BARRETT’S BLACKASS ...... 87 4.1. Literature Review ...... 87 4.2. Individual Psychology in Blackass...... 88 4.3. The Black Instigators and Race Treason in Blackass ...... 99 CONCLUSION ...... 111 APPENDIX ...... 115 REFERENCES...... 117 CURRICULUM VITAE...... 124

THESIS APPROVAL PAGE

I certify that in my opinion the thesis submitted by Husamulddin ALFAISALI titled “RACE TRAITORS AND INDIVIDUAL PSYCHOLOGY IN JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN’S BLACK LIKE ME, ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND, AND IGONI BARRETT’S BLACKASS” is fully adequate in scope and in quality as a thesis for the degree of Master of Arts.

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muayad Enwiya Jajo AL-JAMANI ......

Thesis Advisor, Department of English Language and Literature

This thesis is accepted by the examining committee with a unanimous vote in the Department of English Language and Literature as a Master of Arts thesis. 06/14/2021

Examining Committee Members (Institutions) Signature

Chairman : Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muayad AL-JAMANI (KBU) ......

Member : Assist. Prof. Dr. Nazila HEİDARZADEGAN (KBU) ......

Member : Assist. Prof. Dr. NAĞME NAYEBPOUR (AICU) ......

The degree of Master of Arts by the thesis submitted is approved by the Administrative Board of the Institute of Graduate Programs, Karabuk University.

Prof. Dr. Hasan SOLMAZ ......

Director of the Institute of Graduate Programs

DECLARATION

I hereby declare that this thesis is the result of my own work and all information included has been obtained and expounded in accordance with the academic rules and ethical policy specified by the institute. Besides, I declare that all the statements, results, materials, not original to this thesis have been cited and referenced literally.

Without being bound by a particular time, I accept all moral and legal consequences of any detection contrary to the aforementioned statement.

Name Surname: Husamulddin ALFAISALI

Signature:

DEDICATION

I dedicate this work to all the victims of racism and their victimizers.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I will not claim that without the help of Tom, Dick, and Harry this thesis would not have been written, yet I will show my appreciation to those who motivated me and showed a sense of support throughout my thesis journey. This brings me to extend a word of thanks to my family in general, and to my lovely parents in specific for increasing their financial and moral support. They paved the way for me to reach this significant milestone in my life. Also, I would like to acknowledge my supervisor, Professor Muayad Jajo, whose professionalism, guidance, and consideration deserve my sincere gratitude. Likewise, I am deeply grateful to Professor Harith Turki for inspiring my interest in Psychology. In the end, for being such an empathetic friend throughout my studies abroad, I would also love to thank my dear friend, Fayrose.

ABSTRACT

Racism worldwide is usually discussed by scholars in terms of social justice, but not explaining psychologically why it does not cease to exist. This thesis explores the psychological sense of superiority and inferiority feelings of literary characters from the white race and the black race. It also investigates race treason and its connection with “White Privilege” in three literary works—Griffin’s Black Like Me, Levy’s Small Island, and Barrett’s Blackass. Therefore, each chapter of the paper is divided into two main sections. The first section deals with the psychological explanations which are approached by resorting to the personality theory of the psychotherapist, Alfred Adler, the so-called “Individual Psychology”. The subsequent section tackles the race analyses which are explained with recourse to the concept carried by Noel Ignatiev, i.e., “Race Treason”, which opposes the presence of the white skin privilege. It is found that the feelings of the characters do differ from one another, but they all feel either superior or inferior, depending on their lifestyles and personality types, yet due to societies which are influenced by history, black skin has been associated with inferiority, whereas white skin has been associated with superiority. The study also shows how each character suffers and deals with such feelings, and how the existence of “White Privilege” had an impact on the lives of white-skinned and black-skinned characters altogether. The research demonstrates how some of the characters figuratively betray the prevalent beliefs of their own race either for the greater good or for personal interests, or both, because of racism itself, and its psychological consequences.

Keywords: Individual Psychology, Inferiority, Race Treason, Racism, Superiority, White Privilege.

ÖZ

Dünya çapında ırkçılık genellikle bilim adamları tarafından sosyal adalet açısından tartışılır, ancak neden varlığının sona ermediğini psikolojik olarak açıklamaz. Bu tez, beyaz ırktan ve siyah ırktan edebi karakterlerin psikolojik üstünlük ve aşağılık duygularını araştırıyor. Ayrıca üç edebi eserde ırk ihanetini ve bunun "Beyaz Ayrıcalık" ile bağlantısını araştırıyor: Griffin’in Black Like Me, Levy'nin Small Island ve Barrett’ın Blackass. Bu nedenle, makalenin her bölümü iki ana bölüme ayrılmıştır. İlk bölüm, psikoterapist Alfred Adler'in sözde “Bireysel Psikoloji” kişilik teorisine başvurarak yaklaşılan psikolojik açıklamalarla ilgilenir. Sonraki bölüm, Noel Ignatiev'in taşıdığı kavrama, yani beyaz ten ayrıcalığının varlığına karşı çıkan "Irk İhaneti" ile açıklanan yarış analizlerini ele alıyor. Karakterlerin duygularının birbirinden farklı olduğu, ancak yaşam tarzlarına ve kişilik tiplerine bağlı olarak hepsinin kendilerini daha üstün veya aşağı hissettikleri, ancak tarihten etkilenen toplumlar nedeniyle siyah ten aşağılık ile ilişkilendirildiği, oysa beyaz ten üstünlük ile ilişkilendirilmiştir. Çalışma aynı zamanda her karakterin nasıl acı çektiğini ve bu duygularla nasıl başa çıktığını ve "Beyaz Ayrıcalık" ın varlığının beyaz tenli ve siyah tenli karakterlerin yaşamları üzerinde nasıl bir etkiye sahip olduğunu gösteriyor. Araştırma, bazı karakterlerin kendi ırklarının yaygın inançlarına ya daha iyi ya da kişisel çıkarlar için ya da ırkçılığın kendisi ve bunun psikolojik sonuçları nedeniyle nasıl mecazi olarak ihanet ettiğini gösteriyor.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Bireysel Psikoloji, Aşağılık, Irka Hıyanet, Irkçılık, Üstünlük, Beyaz Ayrıcalık.

ARCHIVE RECORD INFORMATION

Title of the Thesis Race Traitors and Individual Psychology in John Howard Griffin’s Black Like Me, Andrea Levy’s Small Island, and Igoni Barrett’s Blackass Author of the Thesis Husamulddin Sabah Azeez ALFAISALI Supervisor of the Assoc. Prof. Dr. Muayad Enwiya Jajo AL-JAMANI Thesis Status of the Thesis M aster’s Degree Date of the Thesis 06/14/ 2021 Field of the Thesis English Literature Place of the Thesis The Institute of Social Sciences, Karabük University Total Page Number 124 Keywords Individual Psychology, Inferiority, Race Treason, Racism, Superiority, White Privilege.

ARŞİV KAYIT BİLGİLERİ

Tezin Adı John Howard Griffin’in Black Like Me, Andrea Levy’nin Small Island, ve Igoni Barrett’in Blackass Romanlarinda Irka Hıyanet ve Bireysel Psikoloji Tezin Yazarı Husamulddin Sabah Azeez ALFAISALI Tezin Danışmanı Doç. Muayad Enwiya Jajo AL-JAMANI Tezin Derecesi Yüksek Lisans Tezin Tarihi 06/14/2021 Tezin Alanı İngiliz Edebiyatı Tezin Yeri KBÜ – LEE Tezin Sayfa Sayısı 124 Anahtar Kelimeler Bireysel Psikoloji, Aşağılık, Irka Hıyanet, Irkçılık, Üstünlük, Beyaz Ayrıcalık.

ABBREVIATIONS

CEO: Chief Executive Officer

CRT: Critical Race Theory

EB: Encyclopedia Britannica e.g.: exempli gratia etc.: et cetera i.e.: id est

KKK: Ku Klux Klan

Ltd.: Limited

OED: Oxford English Dictionary

PTSD: Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

RAF: Royal Air Force

UK: United Kingdom

USA: United States of America

SUBJECT OF THE RESEARCH

This study deals with three literary works. The first, Black Like Me by the American, John Howard Griffin who narrates his own experience of living as a black man by dint of blackening his white skin color. Griffin goes to the South side of the United States in the late 1950s and settles among African Americans for a month and a half. The second novel, Small Island by the British writer, Andrea Levy. The novel limns an environment where black people, Gilbert, and his wife, Hortense, coexist with their white landlady, Queenie, and how the latter embraced them disregarding the surrounding white people’s viewpoints, and goes on establishing an affair with Michael, Hortense’s relative, ended up having a child from him. The third novel, Blackass by the Nigerian, Igoni Barrett. One day, while Barrett’s Furo wakes up to prepare for a job interview, his black skin tone extraordinarily turns into white; consequently, he secures a much better job than he expected. However, he thinks that living as a white person is harder to cope with than he initially believed.

PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH

The purpose of this study is to identify why race traitors betray their races, and how the sense of inferiority/superiority is intensified due to the white privileges in three different spaces (USA, UK, and Nigeria) and periods (1950s, 1940s, and 2010s) depicted respectively by the selected texts—Black Like Me, Small Island, and Blackass.

SIGNIFICANCE OF THE RESEARCH

The significance of the study lies in the contribution the study will make to the critical analyses of the three literary works—Black Like Me, Small Island, and Blackass. The selected texts were never approached from a Noelian perspective, nor were they tackled from an Adlerian perspective; therefore, the study is to bridge that gap.

METHOD OF THE RESEARCH

The theoretical frameworks used to analyze the literary texts in this study are: the theory of “Individual Psychology” by Alfred Adler, and the concept of “White Privilege” in “Critical Race Theory” alongside Noel Ignatiev’s concept of “Race Treason”. These theories are selected as each theory is connected to another theory in

terms of focus; for instance, the theory of “Individual Psychology” is concerned with studying the sense of inferiorities and superiorities, while “Race Treason” is concerned with abolishing the “White Privilege” that affords superiority feelings to the white race and inferiority feelings to the non-whites. It should be noted that “Racism”, per se, is based on the notion that a certain race is either superior or inferior to the other races.

HYPOTHESIS OF THE RESEARCH

The hypothesis of this study is that the selected works of the three authors— Griffin, Levy, and Barrett—depict that racism engages in generating superiority feelings to one race and inferiority feelings to other races, thereby making the black race members experience psychological hardships while attaining their goals, whereas the lives of the white characters are precluded from becoming more challenging due to their white privileges.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

The problem this study investigates is the crucial link between racism and inferiority/superiority feelings. The blacks tend to have different inferiority feelings to those of the whites, and the presence of the “White Privilege” is involved with that. Also, white race traitors contrast sharply with the black race traitors in respect of superiority/inferiority feelings and goals.

SCOPE AND LIMITATIONS / DIFFICULTIES

This study is limited to the examination of only three literary works from three various continents: North America, represented by the United States of America; Europe, represented by the United Kingdom; and Africa, represented by Nigeria. Therefore, the limitation is represented by the inability to cover a wide range of works that tackle racism and its impact on psychology. Additionally, the selected works have a short number of critical studies. Moreover, due to temporal and structural constraints, they are to be examined from only one theory of psychology, which is Adler’s “Individual Psychology”, and two CRT concepts: “White Privilege” and “Race Treason”.

RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The objectives of this study are as follows: first, illustrating how a certain race triggers either the sense of inferiority or superiority through the presence of the white privileges; second, presenting in what sense some of the black and white characters are race traitors; third, exploring how the characters deal with their inferiorities and superiorities.

RESEARCH FINDINGS

The findings reached through this study confirm that the privileges the white race affords do cause inferiority feelings to the black race, concluding that the goal of the white race traitors is to abolish the white privileges, while the goal of the black race traitors is to achieve personal superiority.

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite. — Nelson Mandela (1995, p. 749)

1.1. An Overview to Individual Psychology

The term “Individual Psychology” is generally defined as a “body of theories of the Austrian psychiatrist Alfred Adler, who held that the main motives of human thought and behavior are individual man’s striving for superiority and power, partly in compensation for his feeling of inferiority” (EB, 2017). Alfred Adler, born in 1870 in Austria and died in 1937, is regarded as one of the founders of psychotherapeutics along with Freud and Jung. Although unacknowledged, to a great extent, as a psychoanalyst, he was one of the most influential figures in his milieu during his time, having inspired figures such as Maslow, Horney and many others; however, his prominence was moderate compared to his colleagues, Freud and Jung even though his ideas paved the way for comprising the essential elements of most modern methods of psychoanalysis (Carlson & Englar-Carlson, 2017, p. 4). Three reasons lie behind this fact: initially, Adler did not found a well-managed association to spread his theories. In addition, his articles were poorly written, and the rest of his oeuvre and lectures were collected by editors. Furthermore, most of his ideas were adopted by subsequent psychoanalysts, such as Maslow, and as a consequence they resulted in fading his name in the background, yet his ideas into the foreground (Feist & Feist, 2008, p. 75).

Adler established a system of theories called “Individual Psychology”. In consonance with Adler, “Individual Psychology” is a science that endeavors to grasp the activities and conducts of every individual as a whole, i.e., as a unified being. According to this theory, Adler claims that, to achieve an understanding of the person’s character, it is important to comprehend the individual’s goals. That is, Adler believes the comportment is directed by future goals. Individuals do have purposes and aims in their

lives because they provide a sort of perfection, and thus prompt people to attain them. Adler’s idea of future aims clashes with Freud’s idea, which is the behavior of the human being is affected by the past in the first place. Adler suggests this idea for he holds that the strive toward fulfillment is grounded by a certain feeling of inferiority (Ryckman, 2008, pp. 114–115).

The psychological analyses of literary characters resemble the process exercised with actual people, because both have a psyche, in real life, and in literature. According to Carl Jung (2005, p. 155), Alfred Adler’s colleague, since psychology deals with studying the psyche and its activities of the human being, it establishes a close relationship with literature. That is to say, art and science collaborate to comprehend the human psyche. For psychologists, literary works serve as a favorite repertory wherein their theories are applied and illustrated. This is because both, psychology and literature, are interested in: the humans’ relations with others, their social problems, the way in which human beings see themselves, the psyches, the anxieties, the desires, and so forth (Aras, 2015, p. 251).

One of the effective psychological theories that could be used to understand literary characters is Adler’s personality theory of “Individual Psychology”. His theory studies the psyche and explicates the causes of the conduct. He believes that the individual is accountable for determining his or her own character. Moreover, an individual’s current comportment is linked with his or her future. He also considers that individuals are conscious of their actions as long as they are of sound mind. Adler’s theory tackles mainly the inferiority feeling that could become intensified by encountering rejection, failure, bullying, to name but a few. Accordingly, everybody strives continually to subdue a kind of inferiority and gain superiority in exchange (Kelland, 2015, p. 77).

Therefore, Adler’s method is different from those of Jung and Freud. His view is that the neurosis lies not in the adversities that people are exposed to, but in the solutions and choices that are made to overcome them. The understanding of a problem is the thing that shapes or misshapes the character and its conduct. To Adler, each person is social, and the personality is built by the social milieu instead of the satisfaction of the biological desires. In other words, Adler diminished the role of sexuality in his approach.

The consciousness is the part that is leading the character rather than the unconsciousness, i.e., the person is not directed by uncontrollable and unseen forces (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 133).

1.1.1. Inferiority Complex

Mosak and Maniacci (1999, p. 174) see, on the one hand, “Inferiority Feeling” as “a subjective evaluation; when the self-concept falls short of the self-ideal or is not congruent with the self-ideal or ethical convictions.” and, on the other hand, “Inferiority Complex” as “a behavioral manifestation of a subjective feeling of inferiority. People with inferiority complexes avoid situations because they fear exposing their feelings of inferiority.” Adler’s theory suggests that the feelings of inferiority act as an actual catalyst for the individual’s comportment for better or for worse. He believed that a normal person is subject to inferiorities. Therefore, an inferiority is not a mark of frailty, nor irregularity since it is universal. The psychologist—Alfred Adler—claimed that these feelings altogether act as the primary motivation of the striving of the human being. Until the end of man’s lifetime, the desire to prevail over the sense of inferiority to achieve betterment is still present (Adler, 1938, p. 96).

As claimed by Sharma & Ranjan (2017, p. 460), Adlerians classify inferiority feelings into two types: primary and secondary. Primary feelings of inferiority are originated in the stage of childhood as the child experiences fragility, inability, and a lack of independency. This kind of feeling can become more intense when the child is compared to their siblings, relatives, and so on. Secondary feelings of inferiority, however, emerge in the stage of adulthood when experiencing an inability to fulfil a certain goal. This feeling can be more intense when constantly failing to compensate for those inferiority feelings.

The first experience of inferiority takes place in early childhood. The reason is babies are little, impotent, and depend on their parents. As they realize that they do not have the power to match the abilities of the parents, they form inferiority feelings. While this early incident occurs to everybody, bar none, it has nothing to do with genes whatsoever. Instead, what formulates it is the setting. Even though inferiority feelings are inevitable, they are essential, as they afford the motivation to strive and develop

one’s self. If a child does not improve while growing up; that is, if there is an incapability to compensate for or overcome inferiority feelings, the intensification of such feelings would be the consequence, thereby, developing an inferiority complex. People who have this complex feel helpless, and, also, incapable of coping with life (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 111).

Various feelings of being inferior are shared by the entire humankind as all are in a situation where they attempt to advance. If a person is brave, he will start eliminating those feelings with determination and straight, practical, and reasonable means. Humans cannot endure feeling inferior for a long time; therefore, this triggers the person to act. If a person is incapable of recognizing the fact that they ought to put an effort into doing what makes them feel superior, he or she would remain to tolerate no such feelings, albeit, in this case, approaches which result in no advancement are to be tried. The aim of using impractical approaches is to become superior to problems merely by convincing one’s self to be so rather than overwhelming the barriers genuinely. Consequently, inferiority feelings will pile up as the source, which creates them, is left unchanged (Adler, 1956, pp. 257–258).

Adler (1956, p. 258) argues that feeling inferior is not a sickness, instead, it is a stimulating aspect to positive development. It becomes a neurotic disorder, however, when the feeling of inferiority becomes excessive, and thus, devastates the person, and instead of guiding the individual to a beneficial activity, it leads the person to depression and an incapability of development. One of the factors that causes this complex is negligence, being unwanted and rejected by inconsiderate or aggressive parties. At the time when a scarcity of security and tenderness takes place, individuals form feelings of contempt and pique, which miscarry their strategies to overcome their inferiorities (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 113).

Therefore, in simple terms, an inferiority is a systematic function that fails to meet certain objective standards. It is measurable, depending on the circumstances that form it. In other words, it can undergo a change contingent on what is considered and studied. An Inferiority feeling occurs when the result one obtains while subjectively assessing or evaluating themselves fails to meet the idealized version of one’s self or is not in harmony with it, or with certain moral convictions. Inferiority complex, on the

other hand, is an attitudinal projection of a subjective feelings of inferiorities. Individuals with inferiority complexes prevent themselves from finding solutions for the reason that they are afraid of revealing their inferiority feelings, i.e., it is a situation which is formulated when an individual is incapable of compensating for inferiorities. The compensation is merely a motive to deal with recognized inferiorities so as to reach greater improvement (Mosak & Maniacci, 1999, p. 174).

1.1.2. Superiority Complex

According to Schultz & Schultz (2017, p. 113), “Superiority Complex” is “a condition that develops when a person overcompensates for normal inferiority feelings.” As stated previously, feelings of inferiority serve as a motive; however, not for the sole purpose of getting rid of them, but to attain what Adler called the “fact of life” or the ultimate goal. Although he linked feelings of inferiority with feminine qualities at first, striving for masculine qualities, he strongly prohibited this notion subsequently, and argued that people free themselves from inferiorities in general so as to reach perfection or what is called superiority (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 113).

To Adler, superiority does not necessarily indicate the stereotyped meaning, that is, to be physically stronger, larger, taller, etc. The endeavor toward superiority is taking place not essentially for the effort to become better than everybody around, nor for arrogance, dominance, or believing to have skills and achievements, although what is previously mentioned could occur to sick individuals. However, superiority, to healthy individuals, is a stimulation to perfection. He claimed that individuals try to bring themselves to perfection in order to feel complete.

When a certain person tries to overcompensate for feelings of inferiority, he or she will thereby be developing a superiority complex. This can be observed when a person makes a hyperbolic estimation of their potentials and achievements. People with such psyches may differ in grasping their situation. On the one hand, they might sense that they are complacent, showing their superiority with fictional achievements. On the other hand, they could sense that they must constantly strive to be truly overachievers. In either event, they become subject to criticize others over trivial matters unfairly, and

are likely to boast, show excessive pride and selfishness (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 113).

As maintained by Adler (1956, p. 259), inferiority and superiority complexes are closely associated with each other. That is, it is normal to see a person who has an inferiority complex also has a superiority complex to a certain degree. Contrariwise, if a superiority complex is investigated, delving deeper into the matter and its continuity, there must be a hidden inferiority complex. It should be taken into account that the word ‘complex’ signifies the exaggerated state of the sense of either inferiority or superiority in an Adlerian context. A person must not put an effort to become superior, or to have a sense of obligation to achieve something if there is no feeling of deficiency at the time being. If a person likes to make a pretentious display of his or her abilities or achievements, the reason behind this is their feelings of inferiority. Therefore, a superiority complex is the second stage of inferiority complex, i.e., it occurs when overcompensation for inferiorities takes place (Adler, 1938, p. 121).

According to Adler, there is no need to inquire about an individual’s inferior or superior complex; rather, the behavior of whom should be observed and studied, and accordingly reaching a subjective conclusion which claims whether a complex is present. For instance, when a person acts in an arrogant way, it can be said that since others fail to notice them, the above-mentioned person could be trying to show that he or she is noteworthy. The same goes for someone who is small and yet, endeavors to oppress other frail, sick, or even people with low social status to seem superior; or would simply be stepping on toes in order to look tall. However, if a patient is asked to answer whether they experience inferiority or superiority complex, the answer clearly could be a yes or a no; in both cases, the answer cannot be taken seriously, because there is a likelihood that they are not telling the whole truth about their feelings (1938, p. 122; 1956, p. 260).

A superiority complex is a means to break free from the difficulties of inferiority complex. Individuals could presume that they are superior although they are not. Such fake feeling of success is replaced by feeling inferior which is unbearable to human beings. A normal, healthy person never feels negatively superior, and thus, never experiences a superiority complex. A person strives to be superior, but in a sense that

everybody is ambitious, seeking success, as long as the striving leads to no fake evaluation or judgement which is the factor that drives neurosis to be developed (Adler, 1956, p. 261).

1.1.3. Fictional Finalism / Subjective Final Goal

Based on Schultz & Schultz (2017, p. 114), the term “Fictional Finalism” is “the idea that there is an imagined or potential goal that guides our behavior.” This term was invented by Hans Vaihinger and adopted and renamed by Alfred Adler to fit his claim that individuals struggle to attain goals. In the beginning, Adler believed that the ultimate goal is dominance over everyone else. Afterward, he reconsidered his position and claimed that the final goal is superiority. This goal could lead an individual to a constructive or destructive consequence. The latter causes dominance and exploitation, urging to overwhelm and defeat everyone because they are seen as foes or barriers. The former, however, leads to collaborating with others, having social interest (Ryckman, 2008, p. 115).

An instance of this concept is that there is an omnipotent Deity that blesses the virtuous with Paradise and curses the vile with Hell. The belief in the hereafter is not objective, yet subjective; therefore, such a belief in the ultimate abode of the righteous will accordingly influence the conduct of the devotees, for they have to follow certain divine codes to reach Heaven, i.e., their fictional finalism. Adler emphasized that such beliefs provide motives, and thus, profoundly affect the behavior of the person. Adler looks at the behavior from a teleological standpoint, i.e., the conduct is explained in light of its ultimate aim. Teleology is the opposite of causality—a standpoint embraced by Freud, which deals with the past and its effect on the motivation of the present behavior (Feist & Feist, 2008, p. 73).

The striving for superiority causes a psychological strain; that being the case, it requires much vigor and determination to attain the desired goal. Additionally, the striving for superiority can be projected by the entire community, not just individually as long as there is a mutual goal or interest. They try to attain superiority as associates of a society to enhance their own culture. Therefore, in order not to intertwine with fiction and because of the meaning the word “fictional” carries, Adler abandoned the

term “Fictional Finalism” and replaced it with the other terms such as the “Guiding self- ideal” and the “Subjective Final Goal” to match his ideologies more precisely (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 114). Therefore, in essence, a “Subjective Final Goal” causes inferiority feelings as it formulates, but superiority feelings when it is attained.

1.1.4. The Style of Life

“Style of Life” is “a unique character structure or pattern of personal behaviors and characteristics by which each of us strives for perfection.” (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 114). In other words, the term stands for the manners by which individuals seek their goals, i.e., superiority represented by one’s “Subjective Final Goal”. For example, an academician has a goal of becoming better in his field that causes him a sort of inferiority, therefore that academic endeavor to choose a certain behavior to be superior by resorting for instance to thinking, writing, or reading excessively.

Therefore, people are not passive in the creation of their personalities, but they are dynamic, i.e., they create their own characters, composing them based on their experiences (Adler, 1978, pp. 355–356). Those lifestyles develop as a way to respond to actual or notional inferiority feelings. As soon as the styles of life are established, it becomes challenging to alter them (Ryckman, 2008, pp. 119–120).

Based on Feist & Feist (2008, p. 78) and Schultz & Schultz (2017, p. 114), psychologically unhealthy people who lead strict lives are marked by the incapability to select new methods in dealing with the inferiorities. Healthy individuals, however, act in variable ways, having flexible styles of living. In other words, psychologically healthy individuals can find more than one way to strive for superiority. They develop flexible characteristics, comportments, and customs. They strive to find a solution for Alfred Adler’s two triangles of major and minor problems or tasks of life. The major triangle includes work; friendship, or the behavior toward others; and love and sex. Whereas the triangle of minor problems or tasks involves the following: self, spirituality, and family and parenting. The task of work requires securing a job, not necessarily highly profitable. The task of friendship requires collaboration, compromises, and reverence. The task of love requires extra values to those of friendship, like gratitude, solicitude. The task of spirituality is concerned with knowing the meaning and aim of life. The task of self is

concerned with the person’s success in dealing with their self, like self-efficacy, self- esteem, and other self-focused areas. The task of family deals with one’s success in having a steady relationship with their family members. All of these life tasks contribute to determining the quality of one’s inferiority feelings (Sweeney, 2015, pp. 17–19)

Adler categorized four basic lifestyles to deal with the aforementioned problems: the dominant, ruling type; the getting, leaning type; the avoiding type; and the socially useful type. The dominant type, having a choleric temperament, is in a constant state of striving for control and manipulation, and is susceptible to anti-social behavior. This type acts with no concern for others. If the personality is extreme, such a person is prone to become hostile, criminal, or a sadist. If the level of the personality is mild, the person develops to be a heavy drinker or a drug user, or even becomes suicidal, for they think that they would injure others by injuring themselves (Adler, 1956, p. 171; Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 115).

The leaning type, having a phlegmatic temperament, is selfish, anti-social and dependent. Such a person believes that other people will provide satisfaction in favor of the person with the leaning type personality. According to Adler, this is the most common personality type among individuals. The third personality, the avoiding type, having a melancholic temperament, and the person with such a personality is afraid of defeat and rejection, and may gain success through no risky paths; thus, avoiding problems becomes apparent because the individual is afraid of any possible occurrence of failure (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 115).

The above-mentioned types are not ready to coexist with daily issues properly. They are incapable of cooperating with others, and thus, their behavior is odd as a result of the conflict between their lifestyles with the real world. The socially useful type, having a sanguine temperament, is a sociable individual who strives for their own good and causes no harm to the community, behaving according to the public needs. Whence, this personality is capable of coping with issues, and is the only healthy personality type. All personalities, except for the last type, are devoid of what Adler calls social interest, i.e., the community feeling of commitment and deference or the sense of the empathetic bonding, feeling accountable to take practical measures and stances toward one another; that is, the interest in the interest of other people. Consequently, the “Subjective Final

Goal” that individuals establish in their lives outline their inferiorities, and the type of personality becomes the directing frame of the individual’s behavior in order to deal with that inferiority (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, pp. 114–115).

1.1.5. Holism

“Holism” is “the assumption in Adlerian psychology that people are different than the sum of their parts. It entails looking at people as individuals, and not as parts or part-functions (e.g., id, ego, drives, emotions).” (Mosak & Maniacci, 1999, p. 174). Adler argues that the parts of a whole cannot exist independently of the whole, and they cannot be understood without referencing to the whole itself. According to Adler’s theory, humans are assumed to be indivisible. That is, an individual is a unit that must be studied in his or her entirety. Therefore, it is not productive to divide the personality into a tripartite structure: the id, ego, and superego, or to classify it in terms of age as in childhood, adulthood, and parenthood (Mosak & Maniacci, 1999, p. 14).

Consisting with such standpoint, Adler (1956, p. 175) declares that he has figured out that a human is a self-consistent and a self-conscious entity. He adds that the major assignment of his psychological theory is to demonstrate the unity of every single individual through his or her feelings, thinking, behaving, and in every other manifestation of the personality. Alfred Alder’s holistic point of view, per se, argues that instead of being rather victims of the hidden forces and conflicts, the individual himself or herself decides what to act, how to act, when, and why as well. All of which serve as a unity which becomes comprehendible by considering the person’s lifestyle which is intrinsically the guiding plan toward the final goal (Mosak & Maniacci, 1999, p. 15).

Adler’s concept of “Holism” puts the emphasis on the difference between his method and that of Freud. The personality is a whole, not a collection of parts. This whole functions in accordance with the “Style of Life”. Namely, all the other concepts of Adler are implied under the notion of “Holism”, hence the term “Individual” in “Individual Psychology”. In this respect, there is no conflicting drives, instincts, emotions, or forces as in Sigmund Freud’s atomistic approach, and thus, all the segments of the human’s psyche are cooperating with one another to realize the “Subjective Final Goal” (Herrmann-Keeling, 2018, p. 2).

1.2. Racism 1.2.1. An Overview to Racial Discrimination

“Racism” refers to the “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism by an individual, community, or institution against a person or people on the basis of their membership in a particular racial or ethnic group, typically one that is a minority or marginalized” (OED, 2021). Racists call for a kind of thinking which professes an antagonistic system that grants privileges to members who belong to a certain racial group, debarring the others from those privileges. Generally, the privileged race is the white race (Ansell, 2013, p. 129). Discrimination denotes the exercises which conduce harm to the living standards of colored individuals in respect of accessing services like accommodation, health care, training, wage equality, occupation and even entering public places like parks and restaurants (Ansell, 2013, p. 56).

In the past, racists provided a religious justification to their discrimination by referring to the story of Ham: while Noah was in his tent in the nude, Ham looked at him, and thus, Noah cursed Canaan, the son of Ham that he should become a servant to servants. In time, religious organizations disseminated false interpretations that Ham was cursed with a black skin tone. The outcome of such teachings gave rise to slave trade, colonialism, and segregation against the blacks worldwide (Roper, 2018, pp. 284– 285).

What can be considered as another justification for colonialism, slavery, and racism in the 18th-century forward is the so-called scientific racism, which argues that the white race is the best race among others (Ansell, 2013, pp. 138–139). Racism, thus, is a complicated system of superior versus inferior races, and it appears in people’s acts and policies. Recently, however, sociologists assert that the existence of racism has changed from being overt and explicit in terms of expressions and practices to covert and implicit in exercises and indications. It causes serious psychosomatic issues, like stress disorder, especially to black folk when interacting with other races, particularly the whites. Such mistreatments lead the racialized people to think of themselves as abnormal, inferior, untrustworthy, etc. (Sue et al., 2008, p. 329).

The interpretation of racial discrimination has two segments: the first is the mistreatment based on color, the second is the mistreatment based on aspects other than color. A case in point is the policies of employment that some organizations hold against offering jobs to candidates with arrest records regardless of the reasons behind the arrests. In a country like the United States of America, black individuals are the ones who experience arrests the most. Therefore, both segments cause inconvenience and negative consequences to a particular race (National Research Council et al., 2004, pp. 39–41; Williams, 2019). The methods of punishing the blacks have differed through time, yet the discrimination is still the same.

One of the anti-black race propagandas that lead to justify the act of killing the blacks without legal trials is the promoted notion about the black men being lustful toward white women. These illegal homicides increased in scale and were restricted to black people, yet over time began to be rather ruthless and aggressive, starting to torment them do death instead of merely killing them with cold blood (Fredrickson, 2015, pp. 1– 2).

As stated by Fredrickson (2015, pp. 100–101), what distinguishes an overtly racist regime in which racial discrimination partakes in social classifications are five main characteristics. The first is the existence of explicit racial ideologies which cause severe punishments for egalitarians because they are considered heretics. The second is the enactment of laws that prohibit racial interbreeding. Such laws are founded on the radical view of race purity, which says hybridity causes genetic contamination. The third is the authorization of segregation, that is, acts of segregation are not solely subjective acts tolerated by the government, yet are legitimized. The purpose of which is to block all kinds of interaction that may imply parity between the two races. The fourth is depriving individuals of a certain racial group to manage public offices or to vote even if the system is officially democratic. The fifth is the presence of deterrents to accessing resources and opportunities, and those who do not belong to a particular race are either kept in penury or intentionally reduced to destitution.

1.2.2. White Privilege

“White Privilege” is known as the “inherent advantages possessed by a white person on the basis of their race in a society characterized by racial inequality and injustice” (OED, 2020). That said, if a white individual, along with a black individual, go to a job interview for the same post, the white man might feel more comfortable with the white interviewer and vice versa, because of the skin color. This instance becomes significant when considering that most business offices are managed by white people. A racial system can embrace a certain policy to exercise its racial bigotry. As an illustration, one policy could involve explicit racism, which is the segregation of individuals on the basis of their skin color; another policy could provoke a sense of white privilege, leading white citizens to aid one another deliberately to become better, while disregarding the other races and their needs (Delgado et al., 2017, pp. 89–91).

“White Privilege”, as McIntosh (1989, p. 1) asserts, is an imperceptible light bag of exceptional gifted supplies that are used on daily basis. These privileges can involve both noticeable and low-key variances in authority, social standing, exposure to discrimination, accessing education, etc. She recognized forty-six privileges that are obtainable for her as a white individual that blacks and other races simply cannot count on. Privileges include—going to shops and public places alone will result in no harassment, hostility, or stalking; speaking publicly to a powerful individual will cause no harm to the members of the white race; criticizing the government will not lead to considering the white speaker as an outsider; being pulled over by a policeman can take place for many reasons, but race is not one of which (1989, p. 2). Consequently, racial prejudice provides one racial group with advantages at the expense of segregating the others.

“White Privilege” is manifested through the behaviors of white individuals. White people may not acknowledge or recognize its presence in the first place, yet through it, they maintain dominance, capitals, and support, which, per se, multiply inequity between them and the non-whites overall. It should be noted that having “White Privilege” does not mean securing an easy life, or an easy upbringing; rather, it suggests that the white skin color of a person does not make his or her life more challenging by adding more hardships to it (Bhopal, 2018, pp. 19–21).

Having “White Privilege” means that the person does not have to deal with things like being racially profiled. However, recognizing “White Privilege” by white people is significant, for it can lead the person to use it in order to fight for a more just society, i.e., speaking up on behalf of people of color via major or minor ways. Major ways involve acts like fighting social injustice in contexts like education, health care and housing; and minor ways, such as listening to people of color, especially when talking about racism without making it personal, i.e., about one’s feelings. It means the white is more privileged, but it does not make him or her better than the others (Wildman & Davis, 2013, p. 798).

As non-whites’ endeavor for gaining equity started to become the focus of attention, racist whites, like the members of the Ku Klux Klan started to stop the diminution of “White Privilege” because equality to them is tantamount to oppression versus the whites, and thus the exclusion of blacks and other races from working in posts of authority in their societies became as an act of protecting the endurance of “White Privilege” (Ansell, 2013, p. 165; Bhopal, 2018, p. 63).

1.2.3. Race Treason

The term “Race Traitor” signifies “a white person who identifies as black in an effort to subvert “White Privilege” and tacit assumptions that underlie racism.” (Delgado et al., 2017, p. 182). According to Kannen (2008, p. 152), the term, “Race Traitor”, was used by the whites in the south side of the United States against any other white individual who backed the blacks in their cause of gaining civil rights, in the 20th- century. Then, in the 1990s, the concept of “Race Treason” was adopted by a white American scholar, Noel Ignatiev, the editor of the Race Traitor journal, which promoted the notion that “treason to whiteness is loyalty to humanity”. By reason of placing this motto as the subtitle of the journal, readers have assumed that Noel and his colleagues hate white people (Ignatiev et al., 1999, p. 104; Woollacott, 2009, p. 19).

Those scholars, however, do not promote hatred against anybody for their skin color; what they abhor is the system that grants privileges to one race on one hand, and liabilities to other races based on complexion on the other hand. They claim that when they say they strive to abolish the white race, they do not aspire to destroy or remove the

people with white skin hue; rather, they want to get rid of the social advantages that white skin affords (Ignatiev et al., 1999, p. 105). They clarify the matter further, saying to oppose monarchy does not suggest planning to slay the royal family; instead, it means endeavoring to abolish the system that entitles them with unearned privileges (Flores & Moon, 2002, pp. 188–189).

“Race Treason” is not about transforming the white race in the physical sense, that is, it is not about getting a tan or taking skin darkening pills, or undergoing surgeries, or even acting like someone from another race. Quite the opposite, a white race traitor is not necessarily someone who becomes non-white, but someone who confronts, and attempt to abolish the system that reinforce the provisions of the privileges. The same is true for those who challenge any other system that favors one race over and above the other ones (Preston & Chadderton, 2012, pp. 93–94). That is, people of color can also be considered race traitors when they exhibit a deviant behavior against their own race members (Stohry, 2020, pp. 523–527).

Noel Ignatiev and John Garvey (1996, pp. 35–36) see the white race as a private syndicate that provides rights to some individuals in exchange of compliance to their rules. The way to eliminate this sense of white supremacy is by becoming a race traitor, urging white people to defy the repressive codes and ideologies of whiteness by destroying the conformity of persecuting the non-whites and not concur with their views. When a divergence of views within the same race exists, no single person can speak on behalf of his or her entire race, and consequently, the “White Privilege” starts dissolving gradually. In so doing, white people who favor the abolition of white practices are putting their privileges and their lives in jeopardy.

Actions of race treason would release aggression against the alleged traitor, be it physical or verbal. Even though treasonous actions cannot be strictly categorized, they do have qualities. Such qualities include acting in a way that negatively affects the white supremacy, and rejecting statism and capitalism; in other words, it is not possible for someone who believes in a state system that tolerates racism, nor can a capitalist individual become a race traitor concomitantly because these two are of the major foci of those who strive to get rid of white privileges, such as the education system, the penal justice system, the social care system, etc. (Preston & Chadderton, 2012, pp. 87–88).

Huck Finn—the fictional character in Mark Twain’s The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn—and the historical figure of John Brown serve as apt exemplars of being labeled as race traitors. Both figures are white men who had dealings with black people and were positively engaged in the blacks’ cause, and thereby experienced hardships. Brown was the mastermind behind Harper’s Ferry uprising in 1859 against slavery. He typifies an individual who wills to jeopardize his life for social equality; although he faced capital punishment, he believed that being murdered while trying to abolish the racist system may contribute to achieve that end even more (Moon & Flores, 2000, pp. 104–105).

As elaborated in this chapter, Alfred Adler’s “Individual Psychology” is closely interrelated with inferiority and superiority feelings, and Noel Ignatiev’s “Race Treason”, for a white individual, is oriented toward the abolition of the presence of the “White Privilege”, which in turn leads to feelings of superiority or inferiority depending on the race itself. Furthermore, Adler’s “Lifestyle” takes measures concerning the “Subjective Final Goal” that derives from “Inferiority Feelings” but results in “Superiority Feelings” when attained. In the next chapter, the aforementioned theoretical framework is applied to Griffin’s Black Like Me.

CHAPTER TWO

JOHN HOWARD GRIFFIN’S BLACK LIKE ME

2.1. Literature Review

Kate Baldwin, in her article (1998), scrutinized Racial Passing, Racial Identity, White Masculinity, and Communism, and correspondingly referred to the philosophies of W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin inside Griffin’s text. She, also, associated the narrative work of Griffin to the way colonial nations first initiated the stages of decolonization process. Furthermore, she compared, and contrasted between the text of the memoir and the movie adaptation directed by Carl Lerner. Kate Baldwin criticized the latter for not being produced and directed as persuasively as the former, claiming that it encompasses a great deal of episodic stereotyping concerned with the black individual, which makes the movie not as reliable as the main source.

Nelson Hathcock presented, in his essay (2003), the way in which Griffin’s Black Like Me makes the subject of controlling and handling the transgression and subversion of the American society widely known, portraying the American southern states as a whereabouts for those, the blacks, who are seemingly regarded by the white Americans as non-Americans. Consequently, his paper shows the detachment of the American society and its connectivity with negative reflections creates a discrepancy in the overseas image of the USA. He asserts that the quandary that racialism posed during the Cold War and the Jim Crow period clashed with America’s given title as the leader of the free world, which, thereby, led John Griffin to import his idea of changing his skin from the cold war spies, becoming like a double agent.

Therefore, the literary work, to Hathcock, represents the south side of the country allegedly being modified, giving Griffin’s work an association with the federal administration because it was practically conducting a civilizing mission. Hathcock went on stressing that the support of the U.S. for democracy in other countries, which affected the post-war emergent nations, was intricately linked with its cultural depictions of the southern states, precisely the one-time enslaving states, which are critical in comprehending Griffin’s work. Different contexts, he mentioned, bear different meanings for Black Like Me.

Another American academic and cultural critic, Baz Dreisinger discussed, in her article (2004), the sense of racial passing in three American works: a short story published in 1899 (“Mars Jeems’s Nightmare” by Charles W. Chesnutt), a memoir printed in 1961 (Griffin’s Black Like Me), and a comedy film produced in 1970 (Watermelon Man directed by Melvin Van Peebles). She had similar views to those of Kate Baldwin in terms of racial passing. Since racial passing was typically connected with black-skinned people and other minorities who are passing for white, Dreisinger explored and focused on passing in reverse due to the conventional image that whites pass as black only emblematically in blackface minstrel shows. She believed that the works are didactic, functioning as a means to enlighten the white people of racism and slavery. Furthermore, she concentrated on the stereotypical properties that are linked with having a black skin hue—intuition, virility, and the white female’s sensual eagerness for a black man.

Haberling and Brian White, in their article (2009), strived to know how the creation and the examination of their case study—which is related to racial prejudice— gave help to their students to reassess their former notions about racial persecution; consequently, they would enhance their comprehension of Griffin’s memoir. All students did believe that the American society was penetrated by rampant racism in its history; however, they shared a fervent conviction that it has no existence in the 21st- century. The essay demonstrates that the students are neither realizing, nor discovering the connection between themselves and John Griffin, nor between Hudsonville, Michigan—the domicile of the students—and the southern states, nor between their timeframe and the 1960s.

After reading and evaluating the research conducted earlier, it is evinced that Griffin’s work has not been analyzed from an Adlerian perspective, nor criticized from a Noelian point of view. There are few studies that examine the work. As has been showcased in the previous paragraphs, critics predominantly placed their focus on racial passing and other aspects related to the study of racism. The critics shed light on Communism for its political support for African-Americans and their anterior enterprise for racial justice.

2.2. Individual Psychology in Black Like Me

Griffin’s memoir stands as a typical work of literature that depicts the psychological struggle of man when exposed to racism. The character of John Griffin undergoes a lot of inferiority feelings throughout his journey in the south side of the United States of America. His behaviors are triggered by his future goal, which is to have a firsthand experience as a black man and uncover the aftereffects of which to the public thereafter. He forms this goal after he reads a report about the increasing number of cases concerned with African Americans’ tendencies to commit suicide in the south side of the USA. After the formation of this inferiority, he starts dealing with it instantly to gratify his newly found need. He goes to Fort Worth, Texas to talk to his colleague and friend, George Levitan, the owner of a magazine called Sepia Magazine to persuade him to fund the project, and in return for it, he will be penning articles about the experience.

Such feelings allowed him to strive to become a better individual by trying to help put an end to the racial and social injustice imposed by his white-skinned counterparts. John has awareness of the world, i.e., the environment he lives in. He understands that speaking in front of white racists face to face, trying to convince them, for example, in a debate, or by attacking them with a collection of essays would not allow him to get rid of his sense of inferiority, because others have adopted such actions and failed, like his friend, East. Consequently, taking such a step might even let the racist whites deny that they are causing psychological issues to the other races, specifically the blacks, in the first place. John’s awareness along with his inferiority feeling drive him to creatively take another path in overwhelming his sense of inferiority represented by the scheme of changing the tone of his skin color and documenting everything that takes place with photographs and memoirs, due to their utilization as compelling and irrefutable evidence.

The effect of the environment, according to Alfred Adler, is profound, yet John has not been driven by its concepts. Therefore, his ability and firmness to make the change in the system or in that environment itself are stronger to be affected. Therefore, in accordance with the context, John initiates pragmatic and reasonable actions to counter his feelings of inferiority, because his personality type does not allow him to

tolerate standing idle while nothing is improving socially. Had he not taken such affective measures, he would have faced a kind of endurance and intensification of his inferiorities. It is from the moment that he reads the report, he becomes an integral part of the cause of the black people; therefore, he takes an unprecedented step of changing his pigment color. According to the events, John’s inferiority feelings are constructed by the social, racial injustice against the blacks. Thus, the negligence of the whites and their involvement in the plight of the blacks contributes to structuring his feelings of inferiority.

The whole journey, basically, sheds light on three tasks of John’s life. The task of work which is represented by sticking to his occupation as a journalist from the start point to the accomplishment of his experiment in the southern states, including the ensuing seminal articles which are later published at Sepia magazine. It is his line of work that makes his experiment succeed eventually, because without it, he would not have been able to carry on, given that his manager is the one who financed the project and assumed responsibility for publishing the stories in his magazine whereby John is going to unravel the grim reality of his time. With the constant strivings throughout his presence in the southern states, and once the beginning of publication has taken place, John marks his success in addressing the problem/task of work.

The task of friendship is represented by his feeling of commitment to showing effective collaboration with, and respect for, black people. As he started to become a virtual black man, he initiates a new striving to deal with the inferiority to achieve the task of friendship, because he is in a new environment and that his old friends do not count. He soon finds a solution by growing friendship with black people such as the revolutionary—Abraham Lincoln Davis—and the veteran and shoeshine—Sterling Williams—who, along with Joe—Sterling’s partner—have become the guides for him to proceed resourcefully in his project. Other subsequent friendships are developed with Mr. Gayle, a bookstore owner, and J.P. Guillory, an insurance agent. All of whom helped accomplishing the task of friendship and let him have a sense of belonging with their company.

What led John to commence his project, apart from fulfilling the task of work and friendship, is the task of spirituality. John is a Catholic convert, which signifies he

is a religious person. His belief in the teachings and stands of Catholicism toward race played a role in establishing his fictional finalism, i.e., the ultimate goal. His belief in Christianity let him decide to go to a place of worship while being disguised as a black man. He calls a Trappist monastery in Conyers, Georgia to see if it is possible to pay them a visit. The purpose of his visit is that the magazine asked for more stories that occur in the state of Georgia (Griffin, 2006, p. 125). When he reaches the monastery, one of the white monks pleasingly escorts him and tells him about the customary time for dinner. He instantly feels the dramatic difference between the inside and outside of the religious house. Being in the monastery, surrounded with people that do not give him the hate stare or call him “nigger”, serves as a convalescence to his injured psyche. He declares:

I felt the timelessness of it and I remained a long time alone in the darkened chapel –– not praying, simply resting in the warmth where all senses are ordered into harmony, where hatred cannot penetrate. After my weeks of travel, when I had seen constantly the rawness of man’s contempt for man, the mere act of resting in this atmosphere was healing. (Griffin, 2006, p. 126) Later that day, he has an extremely unpleasant dream to the extent that he wakes up shouting. The dream is about a group of people—males and females—who surround him and walk toward him with a shuffling gait (Griffin, 2006, p. 129). The constant nightmares that John suffered from all resemble each other. He has a similar one when he spends a night at the cabin of a black stranger whom he encountered after staying on a highway road in Alabama, having a difficulty to obtain nourishment and secure accommodation. He dreams of white people who pull serious and furious faces, giving him a look of hatred. The hate stare inflicts a psychological pain on him, leading him to take paces backward until he reaches a dead end represented by a wall behind him and people in front of him. While they keep on approaching, John can expect from them neither mercy, nor empathy, which makes it quite difficult for him to make a getaway (Griffin, 2006, p. 109).

According to Alfred Adler’s perspective on dreams (Schultz & Schultz, 2017, p. 122), these nightmares revealed John’s current fear of losing his case, bearing in mind that he is practically alone in the quandary of racism in the south against the remainder

who believe in the White Pride. Therefore, John is concerned about how he would face the American public after he publishes his story in addition to what he intends to do so as to stop them from countering and minimizing the effect of his experiment. Since, to Adler, dreams are a kind of a continuation of the conscious processing, i.e., they do not emerge from the unconscious part of the mind. This denotes one could think inside a dream the same way one would think of anything while being awake, but what makes the dream different to the real life is that, in dreams, one is not circumscribed by reason and sound judgement (Adler, 1997, pp. 86–87).

Mosak and Maniacci (1999, pp. 138–139) claim that dreams focus on the current, or the short-term goal of solving a problem. In this respect, John is aware of what he should do after the completion of his experimentation; he must find a way out of the encirclement of the people. The presence of the white people with angry faces stands for the racist whites. Their approaching to John indignantly represents their bitter criticism, while the backward stepping that led to reaching a wall is a sign of the point that there is no way back for him at the moment of his dream occurrence—which concludes that there is no way out but through them.

One pivotal issue leads John Griffin to have such a scenario in his dreams, which is the point that he is fully cognizant of how the surrounding white society function toward racism, and of the amount of hypocrisy, violence, and superiority feelings that are all associated with the lives of its members. He understands, especially after he immerses himself in his project, that when the matter of racial injustice is under consideration, white racists lose their common sense, and start to feel an urgent desire to overwhelm and intimidate the opposite party, i.e., the abolisher to prove their supremacy in one way or another.

Although he initially planned to construct his experimentation as an objective one in terms of his observations, it progressively evolved to become a strong personal experience as well. He originally sought to block the occurrences from having a direct effect on his psychology, but he failed due to the immense terror, anger, annoyance, disgust, and other negative emotions that he experienced in the south to the degree that they demonstrated their existence even in his dreams. Therefore, in the end, the project has become the outcome of a mixture of subjectivity and objectivity (Griffin, 2006, p.

109). The psychological effect of John’s experiment enables him to form an image of how the tension and the psychological problem would be multiplied for black people who have been experiencing all kinds of segregation, microaggression, and prejudice since they were children, living in reduced circumstances.

John’s personality type is the socially useful type. This can be inferred from his dealings with the problem of the lack of social equity in his environment. He has a social interest, i.e., a mutual goal he shared with the people of black skin color. He is psychologically healthy. He has resorted to characteristics of other personality types in certain contexts and circumstances. Throughout the work, John has shown neither verbal, nor physical violence against anyone whatsoever, except when it is against his will. For example, when a racist white man keeps on following him at night (Griffin, 2006, p. 32), he tries to avoid him, yet his endeavors go in vain.

A deep terror took me. I walked faster, controlling my desire to break into a run. He was young, strong. If I made it a chase, he would easily overtake me. His voice drifted to me again, from about the same distance, soft and merciless. (Griffin, 2006, p. 33) Ultimately, John embodies the characteristics of the dominant personality type by threatening the racist to enter an alley where John is standing, hiding from him, yet faking that he is awaiting. Filled with fear, John has pretended that he is eager to fight as though he is planning to induce him to enter that area (Griffin, 2006, p. 34). This situation does not make him a person with a dominant type personality or an avoiding type when he tries to escape from him at all, because such events require the person to lean on traits of other personalities when needed as a safeguarding measure. This takes place due to the Adlerian assertion that if one’s personality type is mainly the avoiding type, they cannot simply change it to being dominant and vice versa. Thus, had John had a dominant personality type, he would have not decided to start his project for seeing himself superior to the black people, having pleasure while practicing his dominance over the other race just like the racist people of his own race do.

Almost every white man and woman he encounters during his experience have the dominant personality type, and almost every black man and woman have the avoiding personality type, except for those who live in Montgomery have the socially

useful type by virtue of the influence of Martin Luther King Jr. and other black leaders (Griffin, 2006, p. 113). Of course, such personalities are formed on the basis of the context, the environment where they dwell. Therefore, all black people have been victimized by the whites to the extent that it played a part in determining their personalities in public. It should be noted that the examination of the personality is based on the standpoints and the conducts of the individual toward the members of the black race and the members of the white race.

Among the black men who do have a dominant personality type is Christophe. John encounters Christophe on a bus heading to Mississippi. The former finds the latter hostile to black individuals. The reason that he does not become hostile against John, however, is because he has assumed that John is a priest. Christophe’s personality is formed this way due to the hatred that the other race gives. Therefore, he becomes anti- social, distancing himself from the other black peoples, criticizing them, and is committing crimes against his own race as well. This is confirmed as he is stepping off the bus, telling John that he is going to kill a couple of individuals (Griffin, 2006, pp. 51–54).

What lies behind this hostility is that Christophe has started to believe that his own people are truly inferior to the other race. This demonstrates the psychological effect of racism. Christophe is psychologically affected by what Du Bois calls “the Veil” (Savory, 1972, p. 334), that is, he cannot see the black race as it really is, outside the negativity of blackness that is shaped by racism, and thus, observing himself and the surrounding environment through the white perspective of racism, and considers the black race as inferior.

John’s resolution of dealing with the social inequity signifies that he has feelings of inferiority. He feels that there is something wrong in the world, since he witnessed, as a soldier, the bigotry that the Jews experienced during the Holocaust in the Second World War. Thus, to John, racism has become synonymous with the mass slaughter. Now that John feels that he has the capability to change that issue from recurrently happening to the black people, provided that he has evidential value to fight with, he strives for it. John’s healthy personality drives him to take the initiative for the other white people to partake in the racial cause (Griffin, 2006, p. 198).

Presuming he had a dominant personality type, John would have exploited the status quo instead of threatening it from being demolished and practiced his dominance on the black people to gratify his selfish needs. Supposing he had a leaning type personality, he would have thought that there are millions of people in the world other than him that could take the risk, asking himself questions, such as—why would I have to do it, not someone else? And if he had the avoiding type, however, he would have kept himself away from being involved in such matters that bring him harm; thus, preferring to avoid it would become his call.

Following his friendly gesture of offering an old white woman the free seat next to him in the bus—when John has not yet gained the recognition of his inferiority feelings as a black individual—she participates in establishing them in him when she verbally attacked him in an aggressive manner. Once this embarrassing event takes place, John realizes the emergence of his inferiority to the white people. It is from this moment onward that John commences his striving to compensate for his inferiority feelings of being black, and the constant failings to do so only gradually paved the way for those feelings to become even more intense (Griffin, 2006, pp. 19–20).

John’s Black Like Me stresses, throughout the course of its events, the difference between his feelings and his appearance. This can be concluded from his speech of the sense of being two men in one soul in the starting days of being black. One is the observer, or the original; and the other one is the new stranger. This has made him feel dumbfounded as he looks at himself in the mirror (Griffin, 2006, p. 11). As he first exposes himself to the world as a black man—with a personality and a life experience of a white man—he fails at his first test to cope. He does not recognize the person he perceives in the mirror, because there are goals and strivings that are novel to him, i.e., he has acquired completely new personality characteristics. Moreover, he notices that his white facial expression started to transform from being happy as he used to be as a white person to a mournful one which he likens to the expressions of the black people’s faces. He says:

I noted, too, that my face had lost animation. In repose, it had taken on the strained, disconsolate expression that is written on the countenance of so many Southern Negroes. My mind had become the

same way, dozing empty for long periods . . . Like the others in my condition, I was finding life too burdensome. (Griffin, 2006, p. 110) To be more precise, John has been ranging between inferiority and superiority feelings. The former is activated when he is disguised in the form of a black man, while the latter is actuated when he is in his normal skin color. Thus, he strives to compensate for the two of them. When John returns to his white status, relief is flooded through him as though he has compensated for his inferiority feelings for once and all. This is due to the period of six weeks of continual hostility that he has experienced in the vicinity of the racist white people every day. Nevertheless, this positive feeling does not last long; after he publishes his report, along with his evidence via Sepia Magazine, he has become a person on whom the whites practice their dominance once more even though he has a white skin at that moment. Namely, John has lost his “White Privilege” for being a race traitor in the eyes of the racists. Therefore, he is being targeted and threatened by extremely racist white people, particularly the adherents of the KKK. This has put the feelings of inferiority back in him as if he is a black person. Because the sense of insecurity is so intense that he could not simply compensate for it, the only way which seems reasonable for him to overwhelm that inferiority is to leave the country for Mexico accompanied by all of his family members.

It is necessary to differentiate between John’s striving for personal superiority and the motivation of social interest. The first one ought to make him a successful person in his line of work as a journalist and as an activist. The second ought to lead to the enhancement of the American community. Both of which are significant in that they urge John to make a positive action toward these two inadequacies. Together, they define and govern his present comportment. In John’s case, he primarily strives to overcome his superiority feelings, foisted onto him by the environment where he was born and bred; therefore, he keeps on thwarting in such feelings that lead to a sense of superiority complex. He succeeds in doing so by way of turning himself to a black-skinned individual. Afterward, he starts his endeavors to gaining superiority in the sense that he is after success without the manifestation of any overcompensation. The factor of social interest in John’s self takes place as he plans to become an integral part of the black peoples’ cause. Therefore, he develops a form of fraternity with them while under cover,

saying: “I felt strangely sad to leave the world of the Negro after having shared it so long” (Griffin, 2006, p. 137).

More than one instance demonstrates John’s holistic striving for his goal. From the outset, no hesitation arises as he decides to pursue his race-related project. Cases in point include being chased by a racist white male alongside the several episodes with the cashiers, drivers, passengers, passersby, and others. All of which have not deterred him from proceeding with his experimentation. This suggests that his psyche is resolved to attain the ultimate goal that he has established. Having said that, there are no drives or hidden forces that urge him to stop or focus on something else. In other words, the terror, the revulsion, the anxiety, and the sorrow that are collectively produced by the experiment do not impede the progress of fulfilling his striving.

Among the white people in the story who do not have a dominant personality is John’s colleague, Levitan. Levitan has an avoiding personality type, and this is shown as he tries to dissuade John from becoming a black man, claiming that he will get himself killed, and that the whites will make an example of a person like John in the south. He tells that to John although he believes in racial equity and justice, and thus, he does realize the significance of his colleague’s experimentation. Even though he has funded the project eventually, he would not dare to see himself in John’s role. This is induced from his discouraging response after hearing John’s plan. Levitan has started to name the considerable repercussions of making such a step in a country like America rather than offering to tag along with him. He could not dare to think of becoming black like John so as to make the project more objective given that the final outcome ought to include the perspectives of two individuals covering extra venues in the country instead of making it a job progressed by merely a single white person (Griffin, 2006, p. 3).

The same evaluation applies to the editorial director of the magazine, Adelle Jackson, who pays no efforts on the ground to deal with the race issue. She could have involved herself with the enterprise in that she turns her skin color along the same lines of John in order to make the project androgynous, but all she has thought of is the reasons why John should not proceed (Griffin, 2006, p. 4). Consequently, Adelle, Levitan, and other white individuals who believe in eliminating the racial bigotry, lack the courage to put their own lives at potential risk, and they are afraid of causing themselves any

psychological damage that they cannot handle. Therefore, they eschew the matter in order to have a total sense of security against the aforementioned threats that John Griffin has experienced.

Between every now and then, John resorts to places or persons that act as a means of rehabilitation when his enthusiasm and self-confidence are decreased. His colleague, East—who is a promoter for social equity—is one of them. East never hesitates to pick John up, taking him to East’s house whenever needed, because East himself has inferiority feelings that are linked with John’s case, and some of which can be compensated for with the success of the experiment of his colleague. East used to be a successful journalist, yet as he has embraced the views of equity and justice, commencing a campaign to promote his views in his journal, he has lost his subscribers and advertisements, leading to his bankruptcy as a consequent. Moreover, he has started to be viewed as an outsider by his friends and neighbors, gaining nothing ultimately but negativity. It can be affirmed that John would have ended up in East’s place had he followed the same course of action, i.e., endorsing equity without putting forward a conclusively plausible argument. Therefore, both of them needed each other for they share the same views, having mutual interests (Griffin, 2006, pp. 70–72).

John is asphyxiated by his own views and doubts. Because of his sense of social interest, he is incapable of freeing himself while his mission is unaccomplished, being disinclined to dodge his tormenting entanglement with the imposed aggression when he is black. What he is afflicted by is not a normal inferiority that every individual needs to go through his or her life; his case is prone to superiority complex due to the many measures that he adopts for dealing with his inferiorities—changing his skin, penning memoirs, taking photographs, travelling to many cities, et cetera. However, it is worth noting that John, as a man individual with knowledge, displays no sign of superiority complex. In the incidents that he undergoes, he is discouraged to press ahead with any kind of challenge because of racism. His inferiority feelings have confined his desires from temporarily fulfilling the short-term needs, such as safety and rest so as to fulfil the long-term needs represented by the ultimate goal.

The social interest is a significant factor in John’s suffering. As a black person, his social interest is shaped in his fright and intimidation of the white society. Although

this society has never hurt him or his family in any way, shape, or form, John does not see himself as a member of the white society, and thus, he keeps on revealing its superiority complex to be demolished. Consequently, he is the one who is responsible for distancing himself.

The dreadfulness that John Griffin encounters as a black person in a racial society cannot be simply disappeared overnight. When in the vehicle with East, he keeps on speaking like a black individual because he has become so adapted to being black. This also happens because he has used to getting nothing but disdain from the whites. Therefore, he has grown defense mechanisms, or safeguarding tendencies, as Adler calls them. Thus, he has started to embrace such mechanisms gradually whereby he protects himself from the intimidations of the supremacist community even though he is now sitting next to his own supportive white friend, East, whom he trusts.

We drove through the darkened streets to his home, talking in a strangely stilted manner. I wondered why, and then realized that I had grown so accustomed to being a Negro, to being shown contempt, that I could not rid myself of the cautions. I was embarrassed to ride in the front seat of the car with a white man, especially on our way to his home. (Griffin, 2006, p. 68) The title of the memoir that is taken from Langston Hughes’ final verse line in his “Dream Variations”, published in 1926, can be taken as a figurative statement that John used to describe his experience in the south. When referring to a circumstance or a time frame, the word ‘black’ signifies something that is “characterized by tragic or disastrous events; causing despair or pessimism” (OED, 2020), which is exactly what has happened to him. His psychology is damaged by the misery and the negativity that he has witnessed. John’s cognizance of the impact of racism on the psychology is among the things that he has induced from the experimentation. This has enabled him to realize the inevitable, negative emotional impact that racial bigotry and prejudice has on black individuals.

2.3. White Privilege and Race Treason in Black Like Me

Griffin’s Black Like Me carries many features of racism. It portrays the explicit racial prejudice that takes place every day in the USA. Besides, it studies the manners wherein individuals with dark skin color are persecuted generally and institutionally. Discrimination and white supremacy from the 1890s–1950s were both evident in the southern states of the USA, especially in Mississippi, Louisiana, Georgia, Arkansas, and Alabama, existing financially, pedagogically, and legally. Those kinds of biases, however, are not as plain as the explicit intolerance against those who are non-whites. Fredrickson (2015, p. 99) contends that the vast majority of the white-skinned racist people succeed to overlook their hidden bias in favor of those who belong to the same race as their acts continue to permit coercing black people.

The 1960s represents a time of enduring racism by the bigots, on one hand, and countering it, on the other hand, by the abolitionists. John Griffin is one of the white abolitionists who puts an effort to help the black people’s cause. Being a journalist, John developed awareness of the factual discrimination. He sheds light on the pedagogical and financial outcomes of systematic racism, eventually signifying that such facets of marginalization—which is based on race—generate a dearth of wealth and adversity, contributing to the misfortune of the blacks, prohibiting them from gaining social mobility rather than merely getting exposed to harsh remarks from racists people. He shows how racists give a justification for their repressive behavior. Without studying the reasons behind their lack of success, white people regard the blacks to be naturally inferior because of their failures, paying no attention to the unlikelihood of a black individual to prosper in such biased regimes. Thus, blacks were obliged to face the agony and misery of racial intolerance until John and other social activists—blacks and whites alike—uncovered the truth (Bonilla-Silva, 2014, p. 151).

John underscores the deep impact that the aspect of skin color has on an individual in a community. When he blackens his skin hue with drugs that empower him to become black might be taken as an act of blackface, yet John’s purpose is not to mock or make fun of the black culture, but to demonstrate that the intolerance of the white people is based on superficiality. He wanted to expose that there are no actual differences between the black and white people, and that both races belong to the human race

without equally and without superiority. To that end, he only darkens his skin color, keeping his job title, forename, and all else, unchanged. Thus, when he undergoes prejudice, it is obvious that the kind of character he has is not the cause. Therefore, John’s work offers racial bigots a reason to ponder over their views about appearances which are illogical, repulsive, and misled. And this experimentation was a milestone during the 1950s–60s because uttering such statements at that time would lead the claimer to grave danger.

What triggered John is a search for a direct answer to an inquiry which is what is supposed to be done by a white individual if he wants to be considered a black man in the south side of the USA, and what would it feel like to go through the prejudice that is grounded on color (Griffin, 2006, p. 2). Even though humans have no control, whatsoever, over the hue of their original complexion, this minute feature governs the kind of life they would lead in a southern setting. John is already aware of this, and that is why George Levitan and Adelle Jackson—his colleagues—tried to dissuade him from carrying on in the first place.

John strives to show the people of his own race how silly it is to segregate a whole race because of a trivial matter, such as the skin hue. A white person would not know the accurate reality because—first, “the Southern [black individual] will not tell the white man the truth.” (Griffin, 2006, p. 2) since the black man already knows if he says the truth to a white person, he would do so at the risk of worsening his own life; second, the white man would not bother himself asking about the truth in the first place. Hence, spatial nearness simply sheds light on the large division between the white and black people. John, therefore, has no other option but to change his skin color because otherwise he will not achieve contiguity. To that end, John takes this task to educate the white people by showing them their own ludicrousness of their own intolerance through criticizing the notion that a significant reason lies behind the bias of white people against the blacks is a mere fallacy (Dreisinger, 2004, p. 526).

Without a doubt, John carries on his experiment by exploiting his “White Privilege” because he could undo what he has been doing at any time and gets his white color back along with his normal life, but he persisted for he apprehends the fact that racists are not, by any manner of means, eager to take notice of what black individuals

have to say of discrimination and bias. He becomes, on the one hand, a black victim and is instantaneously capable of earning empathy from non-racial whites specifically for he has grown to be regarded as the white savior of the southern states by the blacks who knew about his research on the other hand (Baldwin, 1998, p. 118). Therefore, John’s work is significant for it exhibits that the bigots have no option but to acknowledge that they do count on insignificant concepts as a pretext for their positions against black people.

When a person transforms his skin hue from black to white, or vice versa, the real person is still the same regardless of how he/she looks. John Griffin, as a white man, had been raised with every privilege and entitlement he was given. All of those privileges disappeared once he changed his skin tone. John’s alteration is merely artificial, yet this artificiality was enough to make the white bigots—like the cashier in an incident—to stare at him with disgust. Throughout the text, it is observed that racist white individuals can instantly modify their deportment once they see a black person before their eyes.

John reveals that the white people suffer from discord when it comes to racial issues. Racial white bigots feel contempt for anybody who endorses the notion of racial parity and harmony. John’s colleague, East serves as an ideal model of somebody being banished from his own community for challenging racial prejudice. Using his newsprint as a means to persuade the other white people to cast racism aside, East is obliged to live in seclusion on the fringes of society because he could not assimilate into the ideas of the white community, and wherefore loses most of his subscribers. Such incidents used to occur to the whites who are disinclined to converse about racial matters without prevarication (Griffin, 2006, p. 70).

John encounters a white Massachusettsan teenager who admits that he is disheartened by the people who recently moved in to live next door for they do not take notice of his thoughts concerning racial parity, claiming that “all they do is get mad whenever [he] bring[s] [racism] up” (Griffin, 2006, p. 79). And whenever he shows any sign of empathy for the black people, they tell him that he understands nothing about them. Therefore, racial bigots not just practice racism, but, as well, prevent any sort of interchanging ideas that lead to devise a compromise. They avoid speaking of the subject

since they do realize that an open discussion about racism and parity would lead them to cast doubt, in one way or another, on their fallacy—that the blacks are consistent with the status quo.

In fact, there are a lot of white individuals who are aware of themselves to be racist. John, however, comes across a kind of racist individuals who claim to have a harmonious relationship with black people while they practice bigotry and discrimination, evading to establish friendly relationships with the blacks (Griffin, 2006, p. 116). Most of white people in the text argue that they had protracted conversations with the blacks. They purport to be compassionate toward the blacks and eager to listen to them. The whites form an aura where they see themselves kindhearted and the blacks are delighted despite the imposed cruel standards of living. This fantasy helps the racists to believe that it is unnecessary to start any sort of positive relationship with the people they oppress. When they do have conversations, it usually leads to something that damages the mood of the black man. An instance of which takes place when John takes a ride with a white old man. John, at first, thought he has encountered a modest, decent white person, yet the old man started to question him whether his wife had an intercourse with a white man before or not (Griffin, 2006, p. 96). What is more, the man does not stop there; he keeps informing John about the many times in which he had sex with black women who used to work for him, taking advantage of them because they are in dire need for the money to fend for their offspring. This points out the antithesis of the white people’s claim of being morally superior to other people.

Another episode occurs with an allegedly educated white man. He is a neat New Yorker, Ph.D. candidate, in his fifties, doing research about the blacks encounters John in Tuskegee, Alabama. The student claims that he is a brother to black people, and that he considers himself a hope to them and their cause. While cursing prejudice, he invites John for a drink. He goes on stating that he does not see himself better than black people like other white men. Fearing to be rejected by John, he acts as nicely as possible. However, when they come across a vendor selling turkeys, the white student, during the bargain, tells the black seller if he has stolen the poultry. He displays his disdain through the tone of his question along with his subsequent remarks that are said with a sharp voice, which makes him another white racist even though he criticizes them. As the

black seller is hurt by the student’s words, he angrily blames the blacks for not affording an opportunity for the white people to act nicely, and thus he puts that subjective claim in his report (Griffin, 2006, pp. 119–121).

John observes people from the two races, taking advantage of using public transport such that they involve in offensive remarks and heated verbal exchanges to destroy one another. As for those behind the wheels, they play a key part, too. Oftentimes, they callously make use of their control over the doors to make the blacks unable to get off at a certain destination where they are supposed to stop. They, instead, let them get out of the buses at unfamiliar spots in the cities. When he planned to go to Conyers, John encounters a kind of racist implication carried by a bus driver. Whenever a white passenger is getting off, the driver politely tells them “‘watch your step, please’”, yet he remains silent as black persons, even old ones, get off despite the fact that they have paid the same price for the bus ticket (Griffin, 2006, pp. 125–126). However, when reaching a certain bus stop sign, a group of whites were taking a walk to get off, followed by a black woman, the driver is forced to say his sentence again, and the black woman replied thankfully while the other whites did not say anything to the driver’s remark. This makes him angry and shuts the door in a hard manner. Thus, in a sense, the bus itself can be considered as a microcosm of the coexistence in the south side community (Rank, 1968, p. 814).

When on a bus, in the state of New Orleans, John sees a weary woman standing next to his own seat. He feels awkward for not letting her sit; therefore, he moves a little bit to make space for her to sit. The black people behind him showed dissatisfaction. From the expressions of the dark-skinned commuters, he recognizes that he is doing something unfavorable. When the white people are ultimately exhausted from standing, they sit next to the black people and soon figure out it is not an unsafe thing to do. Therefore, as noted by Bonazzi (1997, p. 50), to offer them a seat was more of offering them a chance to practice their dominance. John says:

But my movement had attracted the white woman’s attention. For an instant our eyes met. I felt sympathy for her, and thought I detected sympathy in her glance. The exchange blurred the barriers of race (so new to me) long enough for me to smile and vaguely indicate the empty

seat beside me, letting her know she was welcome to accept it. (Griffin, 2006, pp. 19–20) The female’s eyes grow sharp, all of a sudden, and uttered, “What’re you looking at me like that for?” (Griffin, 2006, p. 20). This has led John to blush with embarrassment, becoming startled by the sense of aggression. At this point, the woman does not feel content with her remark, and so she has continued saying at the top of her voice “They’re getting sassier every day,” (Griffin, 2006, p. 20). Another woman on the bus as shown total agreement with her claim. John ends up being plunged into humiliation, knowing the black people were right when they insinuated that his nice gesture will not lead him to receive a word of praise. This demonstrates that “the [black person] is treated not even as a second-class citizen, but as a tenth-class one.” (Griffin, 2006, p. 43).

Connolly (2009) asserts that during the 1950s–60s, black males were suspected of beholding white females with sexual desires in their minds and, on that account, a black person may be detained under legalized laws and issues which considered staring at the whites by the blacks a shape of sexual assault. These laws denote that when a black person does not look away, e.g., at the pavement or anywhere else when a white person comes across can result in a charge of acting confrontationally. The occurrences on the bus demonstrate the methods wherein black people are forced succumb to the predicament while concurrently challenging it whenever they have a chance like what the old black woman has done with the driver.

The systematic racial prejudice generates a wrong account of the black people and of their lack of capacity to play a productive part in the community. This account makes its own way in the views of the white community, establishing covert and overt prejudice which instigates the society to pay no attention to the difficulty that black individuals face as they strive to achieve success in the United States. This affects the black men psychologically for most of them become reconciled to their misery, accepting what they can achieve because if they protest, they will end up in prison or dead (Griffin, 2006, pp. 101–102).

John faces a kind of hidden prejudice during a discussion with his medical practitioner who assumes that he does not have a trouble with black people, yet thinks

they are devastating. He claims that they cannot give them rights because, then, they might devastate the other race (Griffin, 2006, pp. 8–9). What the doctor fails to perceive is that black people are not innately inclined to devastation, yet it is a normal consequence of the segregation that pervades the societal structures against them. The hidden prejudice is instilled in the doctor’s thoughts, and thus, leads him to claiming he is no racist although revealing obstinate notions against African Americans. Through this conversation, John Griffin displays how systematic racial prejudice, and the hidden bias supplies each other to endure.

Following the government’s inability to charge a number of white people who killed a black individual without a legal trial, John moves to Mississippi, bursting into a phase wherein trepidation is mixed with desperateness. While in the streets of Mississippi, a vehicle passes by, yells at John with offensive words, and throws tangerine at his face. John “felt the insane terror of it,” (Griffin, 2006, p. 61). He realizes that such a terror is unbearable because he is “scared to death” (Griffin, 2006, p. 67) and so he tries to contact his friend, East, to give him a ride. His recourse to escape is important because it holds that the city’s ambiance is soaked with brutality to the extent that it is difficult for him to overlook; at the same time, it shows how his “White Privilege” has helped him to have an intermission. It demonstrates that John Griffin could escape from Mississippi and go back to his old life with no insecurity any longer, yet a black person is forced to experience the endless distress of brutality and bigotry (Bonazzi, 1997, p. 182).

“White privilege” infiltrates most spheres of life, even in terms of instruction, which is an effective means for gaining social improvement to the benefit of a white individual. John finds out that this does not apply to the black people. They feel lost after their education. John finds out this fact while he confabulates with an old tearoom proprietor who states:

You take a young white boy. He can go through school and college with a real incentive. He knows he can make good money in any profession when he gets out. But can a [black man]—in the South? No, I’ve seen many make brilliant grades in college. And yet when they come home … they have to do the most menial work. (Griffin, 2006, p. 38)

The old man’s argument—that black students do not have a motivation to continue their learning process—shows another appearance of the white privilege. That is, if the blacks strive to complete their education, they will not find someone to offer them employment. According to Williamson (1999, p. 92), it is not an easy task for a black individual during the 20th-century to matriculate at a university in the south side of the United States because there is a scarcity of resources to aid them with their studies. To this end, it is evident that black people encounter complications in their nation’s pedagogical and financial orders that white individuals simply do not go through.

The obstacles that the black people encounter in terms of instruction are partially financial ones because an educated African American does not have an advantage as he or she tries to get a profitable occupation. The tearoom’s owner provides to John evidence to this when he tells him:

The economic structure just doesn’t permit [upward mobility] unless [a black man] is prepared to live down in poverty … Our people aren’t educated because they either can’t afford it or else they know education won’t earn them the jobs it would a white man. (Griffin, 2006, p. 38) In making that claim, the owner tries to draw the attention to the financial disadvantage that black people experience during their course of education. Unlike them, white individuals can realize social advancement by having a degree. He continues his observation by telling Griffin that the system makes it virtually impossible for them to secure adequate income and hence they become unable to pay their taxes (Griffin, 2006, p. 38). The owner emphasizes the systematic racial prejudice which marginalizes black individuals, and then, blames them for their incapability to efficiently deal with marginalization.

John knows that the black man’s words are true because he tries to go check the matter for himself. He goes to more than one place, trying to figure out what a well- dressed educated black man can find for an occupation. The places that he has visited did not even allow him to work as a bookkeeper or as a transcriber (Griffin, 2006, p. 36). These incidents demonstrate two things—first, the blacks, that John encounter, are not lying, or coming up with false things when it comes to the subject of employment just

because they are being oppressed by white racists; second, they confirm the presence of white privilege. John reports:

I spent [three days] walking through [the city of Mobile, Alabama], searching jobs … an important part of my daily life was spent searching for the basic things that all whites take for granted: a place to eat, or somewhere to find a drink of water, a rest room, somewhere to wash my hands. (Griffin, 2006, p. 93) Another case of “White Privilege” occurs when John takes a bus from Alabama, heading to Atlanta. At a bus stop, two white women get aboard. There are two seats free, but both of which are next to black people. The driver asks the two blacks who are occupying the adjacent seats to vacate them so that the white women could sit together next to each other only. When the blacks disregard the demand, another white man intervenes rudely. Although the two blacks say that the white women are welcome to sit next to them, the driver leaves his seat and walks toward them, saying that the women do not want to sit next to them. Reverting to name-calling, the other white passenger who crudely involved himself previously offered to beat the blacks out of their seats (Griffin, 2006, pp. 122–123).

John goes through a lot of sensitive moments during his masquerade as a black individual, yet what he extremely suffers from is the constant fear that he experiences every day. Naturally, a white individual always feels secure. However, John finds himself, following the changing of his hue, petrified. Since white individuals keep on provoking him in every way, John has to be self-protective. He has encountered numerous microaggressions, along with brutal insinuations, verifying that even the slightest kind of communication with the whites can be permeated with a dangerous antipathy to the black race (Bonazzi, 1997, p. 184). For instance, when he goes to book a bus ticket to Mississippi, the ticket-seller gives him a venomous look that he called “the hate stare”. Instead of dealing with him as a normal client, she goes on shouting and hurling his money off the counter (Griffin, 2006, p. 48).

Thus, it is a given that such constant racial terror impacts all aspects of black people’s lives, influencing not just their communication with bigots, yet the whole lifestyle that a person leads, affecting their relationships and domestic lives. Just as much, John’s life ends up negatively affected, even when he returns to his white skin

while publishing his story which unravels that bigots’ will to terrify other white people who show affinity for African Americans. John’s perseverance with the aggressive repercussions displays how he is aptly considered a race traitor.

Even though John’s trepidation is still not the same as the dread that black people live through, because he could simply recommence his old life by taking advantage of the white privilege, John ends up receiving a firsthand exposure to what it is like to be beleaguered by the danger of racial bigots. After a piece of news of his experiment gets out to public, John is aggressively menaced by a white bigot who stops by and says that a bevy of people are scheduling to come so as to emasculate him for his support for the cause of black people. This incident, according to Burns (1963, p. 75), documents how the people who empathize with the blacks are dealt with in the south side of the USA.

John and his parents sell their houses, along with the appliances and equipment, resettling in Mexico for a better life, because the discrimination was too much to bear. Griffin sends his wife and kids before him—he decides to stay. Following the threat that he has received from the racists, he is hanged in an effigy in Dallas, Texas, his hometown (Griffin, 2006, p. 161). Although he has stayed, sacrificing his life, yet fortunately nobody has come to fulfill the promise. His firmness presents that he opines that responding to racial risks must be in an audacious behavior, without becoming weak or unsteady; otherwise, the challenge to advocate for the right thing is damaged (Sarfraz, 2018).

John has adamantly refused to run away after the threat. The inflexibility of his decision illustrates how he is exercising race treason. Additionally, his reckless step can be considered an encouragement to all the anti-racists in the USA, in specific, and the rest of the world, in general, sending them a motivational message that could enable them to keep on working on their crusade against racism along with its negativities. John Griffin, as Nelson (2013, pp. 30–32) argues, also demonstrates how significant it is for anti-racist activists to have the high morale to fight the racial bigotry that the black community experiences.

John Griffin’s life as a black individual does not alter his identity in terms of his racial views despite the fact that his sojourn in the southern cities has been permeated

by discrimination, threats, and demotion. To him, it is more of a mission for sympathy that has made him more conscious of the aspects that play a part in the drastic hurtle in the black populations (Bonazzi, 1997, p. 195). Most of the racial strain that John experiences takes places when on the trolley cars. The cramped space of the public transit fetches throngs of white and black people to sit close to each other (Hathcock, 2003, p. 113). This, as a consequence, generates a tensity which results in clashes and affronts. A set of black commuters consider taking the bus as an appropriate occasion to make a stand to show determination against experiencing the deprivation of rights which is a crime.

Despite John’s main dispute—that there is a trivial distinction between the black and white individuals—he undergoes an episode of struggle when he observes himself for the first time as a black person. When he sees his new figure reflected in a mirror, he becomes surprised, claiming that he is overwhelmed and feeling disconnected with his real identity (Griffin, 2006, p. 11). In this event, John takes time to absorb how the black skin has unexpectedly astonished him. This exact scene is significant in the memoir for it shows another race treason act, represented by how he struggles to surmount his own feelings in order to carry on with his experience regardless of what has happened. What has occurred with him also shows the impact of the negative racial stereotype; that is, being black is disgraceful.

Notwithstanding the effect, that the overall bodily look has on the personality, John endeavors to highlight how silly it is to behave toward other persons in a different manner based on solely skin color shade. He does so for he is aware of the matter that a racially oppressed community is unable to distinguish anything apart from color. Since John spends most of the storyline as a black individual, he is detached of all the things that form who he is—his discretion, respect, and peace of mind. Griffin, thus, has no other option but to undergo what he calls “unfamiliar” world (Griffin, 2006, 11) because nobody would think of him beyond his black skin color. The color of the skin, consequently, is what fixes how an individual will be dealt with in the south side of the United States of America.

By unraveling all of the negative actions that the white supremacists do against the black people, John becomes a race traitor such that he has turned against his own

race. John Griffin strives to abolish the system that favors the whites over the blacks, and other minorities. Moreover, during and following the period of his research, he never calls for eliminating white individuals, but pleads for extirpating the matter of racism in the south. Although John has not known anything about the motto of Noel’s “Race Treason”, he fits his slogan; that is, his opposition to the ideas of his own race helps him in standing with the black race. He strives for modifications that ought to be done; for instance, instead of making the black people sit at the end of the bus, they should have the free will to sit wherever they please just like the whites. The color bars are not limited to that—they involve lavatories, cafes, schools, employment wages, justice, and other services.

John Griffin does not remain in his black skin for the rest of his life, which signifies the point that the crucial issue is not with replacing the skin color, but with replacing negative ideas, that encourage hatred and violence, with positive ideas, that lead to love and collaboration. Since it is not necessary for a race traitor to change his skin color, John’s colleague, East, is unquestionably another race traitor within the memoir, along with his other colleague, Levitan, who has funded and published John’s experiment in his magazine. They all put their “White Privilege” in jeopardy, forming a clique that embraces radical views toward racism. They all have acted in a way that does not reflect congruence with the rest of the white supremacists, rejecting the way their system works.

In conclusion, the fate that befell Griffin after his skin transformation by using pills, sunlamp, and dye demonstrates how a white man in the United States of America can simply become a victim of racism even if he keeps everything entitled to him— appellation, job title, clothing style, etc.—changing merely his skin color. Consequently, new feelings of inferiority ought to be emerged. It took this leap of faith on Griffin’s part to uncover the arbitrary racism, vicious approaches, and extreme views of his white peers. In the next chapter, these findings are counterbalanced with the analysis of Levy’s Small Island, where the skin colors of the male and female characters are left intact.

CHAPTER THREE

ANDREA LEVY’S SMALL ISLAND

3.1. Literature Review

Thomas Bonnici, in his article (2005), analyzes two novels, one of which is Small Island (2004), and the other one is Phillip’s A State of Independence (1986), from a diasporic and postcolonial point of view. He has chosen these works for chronological and comparative ends. He sees Levy’s work deals with the lives of two Jamaican spouses, following the Second World War, demonstrating the discord caused by the migration from Jamaica to England, and how such immigrants have participated in the enhancement of the British communities despite the problematic marginalization instigated by race-related notions. The researcher studies, on the other hand, Philip’s work by highlighting the responses of some Caribbean individuals—after being affected by the English civilization—during their repatriation from Britain upon the declaration of the independence of Jamaica.

Sarah Brophy, however, focuses mainly on the character of Queenie in her essay (2009). She charts the life of Queenie, and her status prior to, during, and following WWII, focusing on her intimacy with the Jamaican volunteers, and the wartime love affair with Michael Roberts. Nevertheless, she claims that the white landlady has pleaded the Josephs to take her own newborn baby for narcissistic and self-protective ends. Queenie’s act of giving in on her baby has taken place because she has seen the difference between the behaviors of her racist husband and of her Jamaican lodgers, so she sacrificed her motherhood for the sake of her son’s upbringing environment.

Emily Johansen, in her article (2015), discusses the examination of the multiculturalist politics of the English populace within Levy’s novel. She analyzes the novel by counting on the term of Muscular Liberalism, which is coined by the former British Prime Minister, David Cameron. She suggests that Andrea Levy is representing a paradigm of Cameron’s concept in her work where the residents of a communal area endeavor to figure out how to coexist next to one another through interpersonal and

uneasy communications. The group of characters that is comprised of Queenie, Gilbert, Hortense, and other tenants acts as the focal point of her study.

Tagaddeen and Al-Matari (2018) study in their article the strategies whereby Levy opposes the British institutionalized reflection on the Jamaicans. The researchers exemplify the way in which Small Island questioned the stereotypical ideas related to Eurocentricity, such as power, civilization, and courtesy. They utilize the postcolonial theory in their analysis. Their article also tackles, to some extent, issues, e.g., identity crisis and racism to unravel the destructive effect of colonialism. The two scholars have clarified how colonial attitudes caused misunderstanding between the two distinctive civilizations in the text, blocking potentials of understanding, which results in a crisis in the reciprocal relations among humans. Moreover, their paper assumes that Andrea Levy’s work is written as a response to the English classics, which hold stereotypes about those who represent the Other. Challenging stereotypes is not tantamount to establish hatred but to send a message that dialogue is the affective means for truly knowing the Other.

Ibrahim and Shahoyi, on the other hand, focuses on identity due the significance that concept has in the contemporary research fields of society and culture in their essay (2019). The scholars highlight how the immigrants—Gilbert and Hortense—experience alienation and identity crisis, while having lost the feeling of belonging and integration after their resettlement in their so-called new home because of bigotry and prejudice. They shed light on Andrea Levy’s conceptualization of identity, which would result in the formation of hybrid identities. They have reached a conclusion that the way to generate a sturdy, hybrid character or society is via the acknowledgement and tolerance of the variation in social norms and cultures.

Sonya Andermahr (2019) examines the work from a traumatic perspective, employing Stef Crap’s concept of Postcolonial Witnessing. Her essay investigates the manners through which the literary text of Levy rectifies the Other, being on the periphery of society with trauma. She tackles the relation between trauma of the Third and First World. According to Andermahr, the literary work delivers a sense of trauma associated with aestheticism utilized through the quality of storytelling and humor to lessen the gravity of the past and its association with trauma. Moreover, she applies the

concept of Multidirectional Memory by Michael Rothberg, and argues that Levy’s text deploys the conception of cultural memory heterogeneously to build up resilience in the experiences of the white and black people preceding and following the Second World War.

3.2. Individual Psychology in Small Island

Andrea Levy’s autobiographical, and postcolonial novel, Small Island, like Black Like Me, shows many instances of the psychological struggle whether from the side of the black characters, i.e., the characters of the Windrush generation, Hortense Roberts, and her husband, Gilbert Joseph, or from the side of the white characters, i.e., the native settlers of Britain, Queenie Buxton, and her husband, Bernard Bligh. It offers vivid portrayals of the four narrators and their dynamics of dealing with superiorities and inferiorities alike.

3.2.1. Gilbert Joseph

Gilbert suffers from inferiority feelings at first because of the task of work. Due to his low income as a truck driver and beekeeper in Jamaica, he is driven to look for a way to compensate for this inferiority by recruiting himself in the Royal Air Force during the Second World War. Although he succeeds in compensating for that inferiority, the solution established new inferiority feelings because of episodes of racial prejudice which he experiences in the UK. Therefore, his inferiority is not confined to limited income and work, but also his dull lifestyle in Jamaica, and his harsh life in Britain. He wants to study law, but he cannot pay for neither the tuition fees nor the books—which becomes another motivation for him to enlist himself in the RAF. He strives for a better, happier, and hectic life. Although he has thought that immigrating to the UK is a perfect solution for his previous problems, it turns out it is not, and he suffers psychologically, gradually, due to racial instances at his work in the post office and, before that, as a soldier. His presence in the UK as a soldier has contributed to intensify his inferiority feelings. He asserts:

I had been in England long enough to know that my complexion at a door can cause — what shall I say? — tension. When I was new to England all the doors looked the same to me. I make a mistake, I knock

at the wrong one. Man, this woman come to the door brandishing a hot poker in my face yelling that she wanted no devil in her house. ‘Since when was the devil in the RAF?’ I asked her. Stand back - I had learned that day — stand back, smile and watch out! (Levy, 2004, p.140) At the outset of Levy’s work, Gilbert shows signs of having a leaning type personality, especially through his decision in getting married from Hortense due to her capability to pay for his ticket to England. Marriage has not been among his plans; he even has spent some time weeping as he is forced to marry a girl whom he does not love. Therefore, Gilbert does not even care for her at first; as she follows him to England, he does not put an effort to help her coexist with her new life. He does not support her ideas and mocks her cooking almost every time she cooks a certain meal. He is not even thankful to her other chores, which makes him fail in dealing with the task of family and parenting, and the task of love and sex. Hortense says of him:

He cannot even see how I tidy up this wretched little room. How I make up the bed with the pretty bedspread. How I clean the sink, wash the walls. He does not notice that his precious armchair is resting on a wood box and not the Holy Bible. He does not see the plates cleaned and tidied away. The rug beaten. Or the cloth on the table. (Levy, 2004, p. 267)

Other cases include his dependency on his mother’s bakery business to live and leaving behind his lifelong friend and cousin—Elwood—who used to work with him in the truck and the beekeeping business. He ignores his friend’s advice of staying in Jamaica. This makes him fail in dealing with the task of friendship. However, later on, he shows signs of a social personality type in that he starts to empathize with his spouse, particularly, when she fails to get a job in England. He takes time before his psychology makes him rectify his judgments and behaviors. He becomes respectful toward his wife and begins supporting her in her path of life. And, also, he makes a good friendship with another Jamaican soldier in Britain and settles in the latter’s house.

Gilbert Joseph has a sense of social interest. When in Britain, he accompanies Queenie’s father-in-law, Arthur, to her house when he has lost his way. Additionally, he fulfils his promise and welcomes his wife to come to the UK, and he soothes her when she could not find the job she looks for and suggests that he will look for other jobs for

her. Moreover, when Queenie decides to give her biracial child away to Gilbert to adopt him, he agrees. Furthermore, he partakes in fighting in WWII to help preventing the reestablishment of slavery. When Britain declared war against Germany, Gilbert establishes a goal associated with offering his help to the British colonial rule to win in order to inhibit Adolf Hitler from reviving slavery or death to black people once again. He says:

Anthropoid — I looked to the dictionary to find the meaning of this word used by Hitler and his friends to describe Jews and [colored] men. I got a punch in the head when the implication jumped from the page and struck me: ‘resembling a human but primitive, like an ape’. Two whacks I got. For I am a black man whose father was born a Jew. (Levy, 2004, p. 108) Gilbert comes back to Jamaica after the war ends in 1946, but he finds that his postwar Jamaican life does not suit him; he states “I need opportunity … I need advancement.” (Levy, 2004, p. 172), especially after he loses all his money to his bee business, because of his cousin, Elwood, who loses the bees themselves. Gilbert could not find a decent work (Levy, 2004, p. 81). He fortuitously perceives an advertisement in the Daily Gleaner newspaper that the British scheduled the Empire Windrush cruise boat to collect citizens of the Commonwealth to run services in Britain so as to overcome the work force shortage (Levy, 2004, p. 82). Therefore, this participates in starting a new motivation in deciding to return to England—not as a soldier—as a regular person, seeking work and gaining money because Jamaica, to him, has become poorer than it was before the war.

After resettling in the UK, he gets hurt, and his psychology is injured due to his endeavors to study law in England are thwarted by the Colonial Office, and instead, they offer him to work in a bread bakery (Levy, 2004, 164). This sense of failing in finding a good job intensifies when he hears employers saying to him that they do not have a job for him and send him away (Levy, 2004, p. 258). Gilbert finally fulfils his task of work by finding a job at a post office (Levy, 2004, p. 259). Despite the harsh racism, seeing that people do not appreciate his service during the war, Gilbert, however, forces himself to tolerate as much as he can, for he knows that nothing awaits him back home. Therefore, he retains his well-paid job, preferring to expose himself to the harsh

treatment in favor of having a decent income. He undergoes many instances of mistreatment with employers at his work and with his property owner—Queenie’s husband—but he restrains himself from any violence because he is aware that provoking any hostility will lead him either to go to prison or to face deportation. Thus, he suffers in order not to dissolve the accomplishment of his task of work or his ultimate goal of living in England. Between his striving for achieving his task of work and his pride, he chooses to keep one instead of losing both although losing each of which makes him feel inferior, but he has no choice but to accept the status quo.

Gilbert experiences complications in his line of work. The superiority feelings of the English people lead them to avert from addressing him by his name in spite of his efforts of telling them his appellation repeatedly. Gilbert encounters an inexperienced young white individual who declined to co-work with Gilbert and any other black man. The rejection of the white employee has escalated to the point that Gilbert is threatened to get fired. This instance shows the superior feelings of the whites which result in the inferior feelings of the blacks.

3.2.2. Hortense Roberts

Hortense studies and works in an American teaching institution, authorized by the British government, in Jamaica, planning that, one day, she will have her own house in Britain along with the person she has unrequited feelings for, i.e., Michael. Hortense has a leaning type personality. She is always selfish, and dependent on others. She is selfish in that she places her interest as a top priority in every situation. She is dependent in that she thinks that Michael will help her achieve her dreams and hopes. However, when Michael does not fulfil her dependency, she lets Gilbert to displace him.

Hortense’s inferiority feelings first take place with her overwhelming desire, and her failure to let her cousin, Michael, fall in love with her. She struggles throughout the novel and speaks about herself being together with him. Every romantic endeavor she makes encounters a blockage by the cousin. Her feelings of inferiority intensify drastically only when she sees him before her eyes having oral sex with a white woman in the school she works at during a storm. The psychological impact of this unachieved striving leads her to move to Gilbert to achieve her ultimate goal—which is going to the

UK— that is linked with Michael. At first, she has the wish to achieve that end without the help of anybody, yet she lacks the conviction about going alone.

She, therefore, tries to compensate this missing desire with another man— Gilbert. She does with Gilbert the exact same thing she wanted to do with Michael, which is going to England. When Michael is deployed in the UK, and gets missing there afterward, she obsessively strives to follow him so as to look for him despite what has happened. She cannot do so alone for she thinks that it is improper for a girl to travel alone (p. 83), so she wanted someone to count on abroad to find her a house to occupy, so she considers Gilbert as a means of departing for England. She is even afraid that Gilbert will forget her like Michael did (Levy, 2004, p. 85).

Her goal of living in the UK is linked with her superiority feeling, being an illegitimate child of a wealthy light-skinned individual and a low status woman. She is in-between and wants the best for herself; therefore, she struggles to get rid of her low status by working for a colonial teaching institution, where she builds her superiority. When she travels to England—where she gets exposed to the superiority feelings of the Britons—she strives to have equal feelings of superiority but fails to do so due to her skin tone and being an immigrant. During her settlement in the UK, she learns that the society is totally different than the stereotypes in her mind, and thus, her striving meets another blockage.

Hortense fails to deal well with the task of friendship. She betrays her lifelong friend, Celia. She has prized her self-interest over social interest by destroying her friend’s relationship with Gilbert, and then marrying him—after knowing he has plans of going to the UK—by making him repulse Celia. She does so by revealing that Celia is planning to leave her country for England and abandons her sick mother behind. She does that because of her strong superiority feelings. She feels distressed to see the two get along well with plans while she is a heartbroken single woman having lost such harmony and inner peace in the past with the betrayal and recruitment of Michael.

Hortense is unable to see her inabilities and make impartial judgment on herself. She cannot even cook almost anything for her husband without ruining the meal. She goes through another feeling of inferiority once she lands her feet on the British soil.

She suffers from people who do not respect her in Britain the same way they do in Jamaica. She gets confused about why they are treating her that way since she has a formal teaching license. She believes that supremacy and respect stem from academic success and etiquette. This notion has been instilled in her mind by her foster father— Roberts—who holds such viewpoint about the world.

She cannot deal with almost everything, failing at fulfilling every need. She fails to be a good friend, a decent sister figure, a good lover, and a good wife. Despite her inferiorities, Hortense feels superior to others. She shuns her grandmother and does not even recall her mother for she thinks that the latter is a disgrace to her and that she has given her “bare black skipping feet over stones”. She even mocks her students’ backgrounds when they do not behave properly instead of acknowledging her failure to discipline her pupils (Levy, 2004, p. 32).

Hortense considers Britain to be her original motherland. She repudiates to be originally Jamaican. The reason is that her biological father is a respectful light-skinned bureaucrat. She brags about having a light skin even though, ultimately, she is considered black. Her superior image of herself is seen when she interacts with Celia Langley, Gilbert, her mother, her grandmother, her students, Mrs. Ryder, and Queenie Bligh. She criticizes each one of them for something worth criticizing only according to her. She criticizes Celia for lapsing into inertia in taking care of the latter’s old mother; Gilbert for his uncouth behavior; her mother for having an affair—although she does not blame the other participant in that affair, i.e., her father—and for being a housemaid as well; her grandmother for being a housemaid like her daughter, and for being a slave; Mrs. Ryder for her lack of antipathy to have a relationship with a black man; and Queenie for the condition of her residence, i.e., accepting people to live in her house.

She criticizes people for their education, dressing, English language, and their personalities. She cares for only one person—Michael. “Would the morning sun rise if I could not look on Michael’s face? Could it set if I had not heard him call my name?” (Levy, 2004, p. 42). Despite that, he leaves her and becomes a volunteer. Speaking of volunteering, when Celia justifies the voluntariness of the black Jamaicans in WWII, saying that if Adolf Hitler triumphs, they will be chained as her ancestors in the past, Hortense hypothesizes:

I could understand why it was of the greatest importance to [Celia] that slavery should not return. Her skin was so dark. But mine was not of that hue — it was the [color] of warm honey. No one would think to enchain someone such as I. All the world knows what that rousing anthem declares: “Britons never, never, never shall be slaves.” (Levy, 2004, p. 59) Hortense’s psychology changes as she reaches Britain. She starts behaving the way she used to in Jamaica. Despite her arrogance and manners, she has started to see people looking down on her—exactly what she used to do back in Jamaica— overlooking her birthplace and skin. She immerses herself with fictional goals and acts accordingly. As she gets off the ship, an Englishwoman comes to her looking for a live- in babysitter (Levy, 2004, p. 12). After her encounter with that lady, the taxi driver does not understand her accent even though she used to brag about her allegedly British accent among her Jamaican counterparts.

When she first meets Queenie Blight, the latter offers the former a handshake and introduces herself gently, but Hortense stretches her hand in an arrogant way, without introducing herself. When she finds out that Gilbert has rented only one room, she expresses her repugnance, thinking it does not match her exemplary character. When she observes the room, she says:

“Just this?” I had to sit on the bed. My legs gave way. There was no bounce underneath me as I fell. “Just this? This is where you are living? Just this? … “Just this? Just this? You bring me all this way for just this?” (p. 17) … This place is disgusting. I [cannot] believe you bring me all this way to live like this. You make me come here to live like an animal?” (Levy, 2004, p. 26) Hortense considers herself better than her husband just because she has taught at a school in Jamaica. She thinks that she is superior to him, and that the British will not treat her the way they treat Gilbert, she says “a teacher such as I was not someone to be treated in the same way as a person in a low-class job.” (Levy, 2004, p. 373). When Gilbert offers to escort her to the institution where her job interview takes place for a teaching post, she declines because she thinks that he will become the reason for distorting her image of being a high-class woman, stating:

No matter that he is dressed in his best suit, his hair greased, his fingernails clean, he talked (and walked) in a rough Jamaican way. Whereas I, since arriving in this country, had determined to speak in an English manner. … To speak English properly as the high-class … I worried that the refined and educated people at the education authority might look aghast at me if Gilbert Joseph were anywhere near. (Levy, 2004, p. 372) Hortense sees herself clever, independent, and having an aristocratic background, but when she gets refused at Islington—a British school in the United Kingdom—she begins feeling hopeless and unable to believe that she is regarded as equivalent to her low-class Jamaican counterparts. She screams at her husband when the latter informs her not to worry and that he shall find her a sewing job. She cannot grasp that only unwanted and low-paid jobs are available to her. Through this experience, she learns the sense of superiority of the English, and her own inferiority feeling that she has just explored. Therefore, when Hortense and her spouse leave Queenie’s house and settle in Gilbert’s friend’s house, she does not consider the new abode as being lower than her status or anything of that sort despite it was not in its perfect condition; rather, she happily starts coming up with ideas of how to reconstruct the rooms and make the house look better.

Hortense manifests her superiority feelings to Queenie Bligh after knowing the British community is not as ideal as it is known to the colonized. She starts comparing the British shops to those in Jamaica, saying that the baker in Jamaica does not give the bread unless he wraps it via a bag with clean hands. She adds that the sellers of the textile fabrics merchandize pack their goods in an organized, tidy manner unlike the way in London where she notices the goods are scattered all over the floor. She continues saying that it is unsanitary to clean oneself in the same washbowl in which one cleans vegetables and meat (Levy, p. 275).

Hortense’s sense of superiority can be deduced from her language expressions. She uses archaic and literary words in her sentences, which are not commonly used in modern colloquial English like “household” (10; 72), “perchance” (11; 13; 64; 188; 191; 244), and misusing the word “aboding” (Levy, 2004, p. 11) as a verb instead of the correct spelling, “abiding.” She attempts to sound sophisticated, thinking that utilizing such words in her speech would give the person in front of her an impression that she is

educated even though she makes grammatical mistakes regularly like using the subjective pronoun “I” when the objective pronoun “me” should be used (p. 9). She believes that discourse is a reflection of the individual’s personality (p. 372). Besides to language, she uses clothing styles to manifest her superiority feelings; for instance, she frequently wears her wedding dress along with her white gloves and fedora. She does so because she judges people on the basis of their clothes and language. She misjudges those with a cockney accent. She tries her best not to seem like a Jamaican character called Kenneth—Gilbert’s friend during the war—whom she regards uncivilized and violent (p. 369) even though Kenneth’s brother, Winston, is the one who helps her husband fulfill her wish to live independently in a house in England.

3.2.3. Queenie Buxton

Queenie has a social type personality and shows social interest. Unlike Hortense, she is quite selfless. Although she is not an educated person, she acts in a civilized manner toward the black Jamaicans. She offers her assistance wherever she can. She escorts Hortense to supermarkets, showing her the city. She also does not mind watching a movie or sharing a cake in a restaurant with a black man in front of white people. That is not all of it; she takes care of her father-in-law who suffers from PTSD due to his enrollment in the Great War, not to mention her aunt, Dorothy, before when they used to work with each other in their candy store. She never shirks her responsibilities toward them. She shows sympathy unlike her husband and her neighbors who hate the post-war resettlement of the low-class Jamaican people. Despite her supportive personality— trying to keep peace with everyone that she encounters—she gets hurt, particularly, at the moment when she decides to give away her son to Gilbert and Hortense.

Mr. Todd and Bernard criticize the government for letting the inhabitants of Rotherhithe district in London—who are damaged during the German air raids on Britain—to rehouse in their neighborhood. When they start filing a petition—as a method of appeal—for the Ministry of Housing against their call, asking them to send the bombed-out families somewhere else, Queenie expresses her sympathy and asks her husband to open their upstairs rooms for rent to help them out. Mr. Todd and Bernard, however, strongly disagree with her, claiming that “they’re filthy” and not their responsibility (Levy, 2004, pp. 223–229).

Queenie does not show any superiority complex. She contentedly allows black immigrants and overseas soldiers to rent the rooms of her house—when her husband is enlisted in the army—without regarding them as savages and anarchic. Queenie’s inferiorities are identified, however, with the task of love and sex, and the task of family. After her husband goes to the war and spends nearly five years away before coming back to her, she, thus, feels devoid of caring and loving. She is left alone without someone caring for her, along with the aversion that she received from her neighbors, and with her father-in-law whom she takes care of. Moreover, she could not go back to her family—her mother and father—for their lifestyle does not suit her.

Throughout the course of her marriage to Bernard—prior to the war—she fails to handle the task of love and sex. Her sexual relationship with him is poor, because their marriage was found out of interest. Namely, he has craved for her—in addition to wanting somebody to help him in taking care of his father while he works at a bank— whereas she has wanted a husband to save her from going back to her parents after the death of her aunt. Thus, they could not have a child even when twelve months of their marriage have passed. She finds her matrimonial life boring; she wants a baby to refresh her. Queenie goes to the doctor to see why she could not have a child. He tells her that one of the factors of the formation of pregnancy is that she must enjoy her intercourse, but she could not do so because her husband, for her, is not the one. They do not have a similar mentalities, behaviors, or goals.

She keeps on striving until Michael makes her feel satisfied with her sexual intercourse for the first time. Therefore, she finds a chance to compensate for her inferior feelings when she starts having a short affair with the black Jamaican RAF soldier. Michael helps Queenie achieve, to some extent, both tasks—the task of love and sex, and the task of family and parenting. He values and satisfies her sexually and makes her get pregnant which is something she has craved for ever since she has married her English husband.

Queenie’s ultimate goal—from childhood—is to be free of her parents’ farm and livestock along with the lifestyle that is associated with them. Therefore, this is the sole reason which has allowed her to accede to the idea of getting married from Bernard. Namely, he serves as a means of getaway for her from all of her unwanted lifestyle,

because when her aunt—Dorothy—dies, the owner of the house requests to reclaim his property. Thus, she is forced to accept getting married to him for her lifestyle is threatened of going back to her parents’ agricultural style of life. Before the marriage, Queenie’s aunt tries to persuade her to give a chance to Bernard to become close to her, Queenie asserts that she knows nothing about him except for being a bank official and that he loves candy (Levy, pp. 211–212).

Additionally, when Queenie begins wondering, asking her aunt if what is happening between her and Bernard is called courting—even though the old woman confirms it—Queenie has doubts and thus contradicts it. She goes:

I’d seen girls who were courting. They looked dreamy-eyed on the world, floating on feet that never felt the ground. They plucked at daisies for most of the day, sighing, ‘He loves me, he loves me not, he loves me’. When they danced, their best boys held them so close you couldn’t pass a paper between them. And when they kissed, it was rapture that made their legs buckle, delight that made it taste of nectar. Courting girls thought their best boys to be fashioned by the hand of God Himself. (Levy, p. 212) While she keeps on pondering over her aunt’s statement—that she is courting with Bernard—she finds herself still dejected and unhappy about the idea. She ends up believing the courting matter is not of great importance to her. Therefore, when on a date, they sit together on a bench, telling him “‘Bernard, I’ve enjoyed our little trips but I don’t think we should see each other any more.’” (Levy, 2004, p. 212). With these claims, she shows her disagreement with her aunt because she does not see herself being romantically involved with Bernard or having an intention of marrying him whatsoever.

Queenie, after knowing Michael, all she has strived to do is to live for the rest of her life with him. She wants to go with him to Canada and start anew, yet she could not achieve that goal (Levy, 2004, p. 410). She indulges in daydreams where she wants him to beg her to escort him, at which point, she would seal up the house and leave. He leaves, however, without either one asking the other for company. She senses that she is pregnant because of what the doctor has told her when she has visited him before the war. He tells her that both entities must enjoy the moment in order to have pregnancy, and she confirms that she has enjoyed with Michael Roberts (Levy, 2004, p. 411).

3.2.4. Bernard Bligh

Bernard Bligh, unlike the other three narrators, shows hostility and antipathy to others—be it low class individuals or people from other races. His psychology is intertwined with class, and then, with race, which both permeate the English society during the mid 1940s. His psychology and behaviors are quite the opposite to his wife’s. He thinks he is superior. As he enrolls in the RAF, his sense of superiority is intensified instead of being sympathetic toward others. When he comes back, he ruins the sense of the tolerant assimilation that has existed between the black lessees and their white lessor. His harsh mistreatment to Gilbert and his spouse makes Queenie realize how the white people treat the other races, and thus, makes her mind to give her newborn baby to the Josephs. The quotation below demonstrates how narrow-mindedly xenophobic he is.

The war was fought so people might live amongst their own kind. Quite simple. Everyone had a place. England for the English and the West Indies for these coloured people. … their place isn’t here. … I fought a war to protect home and hearth. Not about to be invaded by stealth. (Levy, 2004, pp. 388–390) Bernard has a dominant personality type. When he comes back to his own house—finding that his wife is letting the immigrants settle in his house—he feels insecure and destabilized. The presence of the black immigrants in his house ought to shake his sense of superiority, and therefore he takes action in making them leave, because his sense of superiority is being threatened to be faded into a sense of inferiority. When he enters Gilbert’s private room to talk with him, and the latter becomes angry claiming that he deserves some privacy, Bernard’s feelings of superiority become quite clear when saying “What [Gilbert] deserved was to be thrown on to the street. Him and all the other ungrateful swine.” (390). And when Gilbert informs Bernard that he is a friend to Queenie, he goes “‘How dare you? … A friend? With the likes of you?’ Excitable, these darkies. Worse than the coolies.” (390). “‘These people have to leave. I won’t have wogs in my house.’” (390). Even when they are about to fight, he describes himself with superior qualities, like being taller than Gilbert and, also, describes his own push to Gilbert as being stronger than how the latter does.

His lack of success in dealing with the task of family and parenting leads his wife to have an affair, after which she gets pregnant, and then gives her baby away. He even goes further wrongfully accusing and cursing Gilbert—alleging that he has made Queenie pregnant—as if he is the only black man in Great Britain. In more than one instance, Bernard shows signs of superiority every time topics related to class and race are discussed.

It is evident that Bernard Bligh considers himself superior, regarding himself descending from a superior nation. Throughout his narration section, he describes himself in a manner that reveals an exaggerated sense of one’s own importance or abilities, such as being a “civilised man”, (330) “proud to belong to a civilisation” (300). The author of the novel makes Bernard serve as an emblematic figure that stands for those who have beliefs that they have a clear-cut distinction in terms of race, nation, and culture.

His carelessness in handling the task of love and sex and the task of family and sex is shown in his affair with a minor Indian prostitute without exchanging letters with his wife (p. 344). Moreover, when he meets his wife for the first time in nearly five years, and she tells him that he has been away for a very long time, all he shows is a dull agreement, which makes his wife even unhappier than she used to because of his taciturnity (p. 278).

His superiority leads him to form inaccurate judgments on others. When one day he sees the Josephs being well dressed while heading out of his house, he believes that Hortense is overdressing, and that her husband is striving to seem stylish and that his clothes does not fit him, making wry comments on both (Levy, p. 387). Bernard is always in a position of blaming people without having a moment to blame himself for his behaviors. He does not criticize himself for being a person who violates people’s privacy, or even for—before when he was deployed in India—losing his rifle without a sense of responsibility (p. 324). He always criticizes the Indians, calling them coolies which is a word in Urdu meaning slaves. He curses them for wanting the British to get out of India despite the fact that he and the other British soldiers have killed many Indians. He sees them as fools and describes them as being worse than the Japanese

people (Levy, pp. 322–323). Therefore, technically, to Bernard, the Japanese are bad, the Indians are worse, and the Blacks are the worst.

Even when he is put to prison after he loses his weapon, he sees that the government should not have put them together in the penitentiary for the other prisoners are inferior to him. He claims that the place suits them, and the cell seems comfortable for an Indian, because inside the chambers, they get to eat without hard work. However, to him, it is a cruel punishment because he is not used to being locked up like them (Levy, pp. 329–330). His sense of being superior leads him to false exaggerations, like thinking the colored convicts are locked up happily in jail.

3.3. The Underprivileged Blacks and Race Treason in Small Island

Small Island as a novel shows the clash that happened between the black Jamaicans and the white Britons. It is a roman à clef, i.e., a novel that is overlaid with a façade of fiction wherein real individuals or incidents appear with fictitious names. According to Lowe (2018), Andrea Levy, typically, penned the race-based experience of her parents during their immigration in the 1948 Windrush project. What makes the novel stand out among other literary works that deal with the matter of racism is that it shows how racism affected the lives of people from both parties, narrating their experiences themselves.

Since the blacks live in communities run by white establishments in the novel, Gilbert’s and Hortense’s day-to-day dealings and opportunities are demarcated by racial bigotry. Although Levy’s work concentrates on their exposure to racism in Great Britain, the novel provides sights of the way in which racism works in other cultures as well, such as Jamaica and India. The lack of job opportunities and money in Jamaica lead Gilbert to enlist himself in the Second World War. After WWII, however, Gilbert— along with other dark-skinned Jamaicans who immigrated to the UK—undergoes racial prejudice much worse than that which he encountered in Jamaica.

Even though the vast majority of the Jamaican populace is black, the country is managed by white British colonialists, which indicates that racism pervades the systemic structures of that country. Since colonies seek to match the laws and issues of the colonizers, which in this case, Britain, skin color is a sign of status and class. The lighter

skin one has, the higher status one would enjoy. Namely, the black Jamaicans who have a lighter skin tone than their peers make use of the system, yet to a small extent of course. For instance, Hortense’s slightly bright skin lets her receive a professional education, and it does provide her a decent job in Jamaica, but not in Britain. In Britain, all black skin shades are considered one. Education and wealth of a person in their native country are useless when being black in Britain. Hortense herself claims that even the rich and blacks with pale skin “still looked poor to [the whites]” (Levy, 2004, p. 37). That suggests that the whites, particularly the colonialists, look upon every single Jamaican as a retrograde, overlooking the factors related to economy and social status.

As a soldier for the Royal Air Force, Gilbert Joseph—during his episodic involvements with the troops of the US in Britain—receives both interest and segregation from English folks. Some of them have no clue about the originality of the black race to the extent that they believe that if they brush black people’s skin tissue, they would “make it turn white” (Levy, 2004, p. 137). Such notions, though, decrease in importance when studying the harsh conduct of the US commanders. In an event, Gilbert experiences a shock upon his appearance at a US military base which, eventually, results in a diplomatic fuss. Gilbert could not recover the plane parts that he was assumed to gather from the American base for the Americans have refused and complained to their commanding officers as they see a black individual on their military base, even if he was assigned as a British airman by the UK (pp. 126–128).

After a while, Gilbert lifts a pair of black American soldiers—Jon and Isaac— that settled in ghettoized cities where they have “never talked to a white person ‘fore.” (Levy, 2004, p. 134). The two soldiers become dumbfounded, knowing that Gilbert is sharing a room with white troopers. They tell Gilbert that according to the US army laws, the whites and the blacks are permitted to visit the nearby cities on different days so as to not to establish an interaction with each other, and that “‘the American army is very strict about keeping black folks apart.’” (Levy, 2004, p. 132). This sheds light on the institutionalized racism in the USA. Gilbert realizes that in England, there are much fewer acts of racism and right limitations compared to those in Jamaica and America; however, he understands, after a while, that the English society is growing to be racially mixed, yet racial bigotry is inevitable.

Although in the army, the British government treat Gilbert well, but the citizens do not do so. His presence around them causes tensity (Levy, 2004, p. 140). When he seeks employment, following the end of the war, he has started to comprehend that the organizations do not care about his service any longer. That is, they do not want to set a guide to be considered in similar subsequent circumstances which lead a black fighter to expect a decent job after finishing the task of fighting. Therefore, the establishments provide decent positions only for the white combatants, and thus, they inform Gilbert that he, and his kind, are limited to manual work so as to not upset the white work force (Levy, 2004, p. 258). Racial bias does not stop at this point; it permeates the social structure and the values of the English communities.

People who live close to Queenie’s house, such as Cyril Todd, are concerned about the unity of their neighborhood—afraid that their district would be sullied by the presence of the black people. Upon Hortense’s arrival with other emigrants to Great Britain, the neighbors evolve into being extremely xenophobic, considering the existence of the blacks to be tantamount to an assault on their conventional community. The sheer hypocrisy lies in the fact that they have welcomed the black soldiers when they were at war with Germany; in other words, their so-called conventional values virtually vanished during the war for they needed soldiers to fight and die for them and for their interests. Now they have finished with the war effort, they started to avoid the blacks as they have done before.

When Queenie and Gilbert go together to a café, all American soldiers, and other white passersby, turn to stare at them with disbelief, whispering to one another, and doing things to terrify Gilbert such as flexing fists, staring, throwing a cigarette toward Gilbert’s direction, and even the server deals with him rudely. Whatever collation he asks for, the server tells him it is not available until she tells him that there is only one cake on the menu, which leads him to offer it to Queenie, and even when the waitress delivers the cake, she lands it without courtesy (Levy, 2004, pp. 148–150). During their friendly discussion, the American soldiers keep on terrifying him. The Jamaican becomes captivated and starts to think to get out without being humiliated in front of his new friend. When Queenie gets out to her father-in-law, Arthur, seeing him outside, Gilbert tries to follow her, but the soldiers block the door and then when they are about

to leave in order to wait for him outside, the waitress goes to them and gets them back to their table because they ordered and must pay, which affords a way out for Gilbert. He says:

I was learning to despise the white American GI above all other. They were the army that hated me the most! Out of place in the genteel atmosphere of this dreary tea-shop these three aggrieved GIs twitched with hostile excitement, like snipers clearing their aim at a sitting target … these poor GIs were in a murderous mood watching a nigger sitting with his head still high. If the defeat of hatred is the purpose of war, then come, let us face it: I and all the other colored servicemen were fighting this war on another front. (Levy, 2004, p. 147) The peak of racism takes place when Gilbert, along with the landlady, Queenie, tag along Arthur, her father-in-law, to the cinema. They are told, out of respect for the white American clients, they have to make Gilbert take a seat at the end of the theater hall. Both Gilbert and Queenie angrily refuse to obey and results in unrest, followed by a brawl between the white and black soldiers. Because of this anarchy, an American military policeman—as he shoots a bullet in the air, trying to force order—kills Arthur accidently. Gilbert sees Arthur “another casualty of war” signifying the war that pits the whites against the blacks. Arthur’s demise displays that racial bigotry is not solely dangerous to the black people, but the whole society as well (Levy, 2004, p. 160).

The usherette states that Gilbert ought to sit at the end of the hall, claiming that she is just following the rules to this point. Queenie tells her there are vacant seats and argues the usherette about the petty rules that the latter is adhering to. The usherette keeps insisting that he should sit with them even though Gilbert tells her that he is not a black American, but he is working for the British army. She, however, tells him that the matter has nothing to do with that; it is because he is colored. He answers her saying that “this is England … not America.” He claims that he can sit wherever he wants. She could not hold her racial bigotry and shouts, “all niggers … all coloreds up the back rows” (Levy, 2004, p. 153).

The whole negative atmosphere is created simply because the present white Americans, and other racists, do not want to sit next to black people. As a consequence to Gilbert’s denial—ignoring what the employee said and sat next to Queenie—a chain

of shouting and cursing starts among the whites and blacks. The whites keep repeating the word “nigger” in every sentence they utter to provoke the blacks, while Queenie is the only white person in the movie theater who is defending the blacks’ rights like sitting freely like anybody else, saying to the white racists “I prefer them to you any day” (Levy, 2004, p. 154).

The whites do all they can in order to tease the blacks. When the blacks revolt after the others calling them using the N-word, a white soldier says “Jigaboo suit you better” which is another racial slur used against the blacks (Levy, 2004, p. 155). The death of Arthur, as Gilbert states, is an extra number to the casualties of the war between the blacks and whites. This event exemplifies the behaviors against the blacks in not just Britain, but the USA as well. After Arthur’s death, the usherette strives to lay the blame on the American soldiers, yet she is also responsible for what has happened because of her racism—which is evident in her speech before the commotion.

Although Gilbert enlists himself in the RAF to battle for the right to be appreciated as a black man, he, ironically, is humiliated in and after the process, finally realizing that the way racism is instilled in people’s minds cannot be simply disappeared. He figures out that racism not only takes place in England or his homeland, Jamaica, but in the United States, too (Levy, 2004, pp. 110–111). Gilbert and his wife, Hortense, encounter many shapes of racial bigotry in various communities. The incapability to break free from such practices reduces their contentment.

The denial of giving a straight solution to racial prejudice in the literary work suggests that discrimination will keep on shaping the lives of colored individuals. It is also an answer to Gilbert’s notion—that England is a country that has no racism—is a figment of his imagination before experiencing racism himself. A case in point is Bernard’s racial discourse when his wife, Queenie, suggested that her baby lives with the Josephs which drives Gilbert to launch into a diatribe against Mr. Bligh so as to let him recognize the negativity of his racism (Levy, 2004, p. 434). Gilbert states:

You know what your trouble is, man? … Your white skin. You think it makes you better than me. You think it give [sic] you the right to lord it over a black man. But you know what it make [sic] you? You wan’ [sic] know what your white skin make [sic] you, man? It make [sic]

you white. That is all, man. White. No better, no worse than me – just white. (Levy, 2004, p. 435) Ultimately, Gilbert plans to adopt the infant for he cannot let him grow abandoned in an environment loaded with racist individuals like Bernard, and thus, he would have a terrible life resembling the lives of other people with dark skin (Levy, 2004, p. 436). Lima (2007, p. 79) argues that there are a lot of black babies who experience what baby Michael has experienced, i.e., they were discarded and offered for adoption in order to be raised allegedly by proper parent figures; in other words, black human beings. Consequently, based on Smith (1988, p. 210), other black kids were, for racist reasons, hidden or abandoned by the white females who had copulation with black men, and only black-skinned people considered the idea of adopting them.

Gilbert recognizes the marks of the English shift in racial bigotry after a very short time of his second arrival in Britain. He sees his brother in arms, James, standing bewildered, dressing the army uniform, encircled by poor British kids whom the filth and mud cover their faces. They keep on shouting at him, wanting from James to show them his tail, suggesting he is a monkey (Levy, 2004, p. 117). The kids are small-minded enough to fail to notice the fact that with their racist mischievous behavior—shouting and jumping—they are the ones who look like monkeys.

Bernard, Queenie’s husband, also contributes to manifest the English racial prejudice as he comes back home from the war. He does not want, as he negatively puts it, “a prostitute and coloureds” to be the renters of his house. He tells his wife that she should have let “decent lodgers … respectable people” in place of the black people (Levy, 2004, p. 360). In fact, his racism starts when he first encounters Gilbert. He believes that Gilbert resembles the appearance of a golliwog (Levy, 2004, p. 355), which is, as stated by McClellan (2020, pp. 10–11), a doll-like character from the 19th century, for having a sort of bulging eyes, which is, per se, used as a racist symbol to mock black- skinned individuals by the British supremacists.

Securing a job is an extra trouble faced by the black Jamaicans. Gilbert attends several job interviews. On each occasion, he believes that he is going to get the job he is applying for. The author of the work, Andrea Levy, claimed, in an interview, that a colored individual can be easily refused and dismissed for only being black (Fleming,

2005, p. 16). The same thing happens with Gilbert; for example, as he applies for a job as a store man, the person who runs the interview turns out to be a former soldier at the Royal Air Force, and thus, he keeps talking about his life and service for sixty minutes, and ultimately tells Gilbert he is rejected. The interviewer ignores his racial acts and blames the other white Britons rather than admitting that he is simply racist. Gilbert looks for a justification for being rejected for he is aware that he is capable of handling the aforementioned job post. The white interviewer says:

No, sorry … You see, we have white women working here. Now, in the course of your duties, what if you accidentally found yourself talking to a white woman? … I’m afraid all hell would break loose if the men found you talking to their women. They simply wouldn’t stand for that. As much as I’d like to I can’t give you the job. You must see the problems it would cause? (Levy, 2004, p. 258) Gilbert Joseph suffers by the mindset of the white British individuals and the existence of the white privilege. He could not realize how could looking at white employees or customers be seen as a problematic behavior. Despite the lengthy conversation of the interviewer, claiming that he appreciates the assistance that the black Jamaicans have offered when Britain was at war, he caters to the arbitrary needs of the white employees.

If a black individual has not worn the army uniform, he would not even be received in the office as an applicant. Hence, the uniform has given him a ticket to become, allegedly, a human during World War II, but a semi-one after the end of it. That is, he becomes equal to other English fighters only when in action, but beneath them when at peace (Lima, 2005, p. 77). A different interviewer asks him whether he is a believer in God or not, and although Gilbert has lost his faith because of how Britain is treating him, he tells him that he does believe in the Deity. The interviewer started to pray and requests from Gilbert to join him, and Gilbert does so since he wants the post. After they finish praying, the interviewer informs Gilbert that he is unable to hire him for his associates do not like non-white individuals (Levy, p. 258). Gilbert attempts to have a job more than once. In each time, the job opportunity vanishes once they observe that he is black. He states:

In five, no, in six places, the job I had gone for vanish with one look upon my face. Another, I wait, letter in my hand, while everyone in this office go about their business as if I am not there. I can feel them watching me close as a pickpocket with his prey but cannot catch even a peeping twinkle of an eye. Until a man come [sic] in agitated. ‘What’re you doing here?’ he say [sic] to me. ‘We don’t want you. There’s no job for you here. I’m going to get in touch with that labour exchange, tell them not to send any more of you people. Can’t use your sort. Go on, get out.’ (levy, 2004, p. 258) Gilbert, eventually, finds a job as a mail carrier in a post office. As claimed by (Innes, 2002, p.180), jobs, such as working at the post office, were designed for the black Jamaican emigrants during that time. In the space of his work, however, employees seek to harm him. When Gilbert takes the right pile of documents, all seems to go normal, yet when he lifts the wrong one, he starts to hear racially hostile remarks. Gilbert asks for support from the other members of staff, yet they state that they do not fathom what he is telling them and asks him to speak English while he is already speaking English. As he does not want to lose the job, Gilbert keeps on acting respectfully until he loses his control once because of the constant comments he receives and attacks the racist white person. However, Gilbert stands idle, not raising a finger when the white person physically assaults him for he understands that if he responds physically, he would end up being fired (Levy, 2004, pp. 260–263).

Gilbert’s wife, Hortense, also faces refusal after she puts in an application for a teaching occupation which leads her to be surprised since she was fully authorized to teach back in her old country by the British. Before Hortense goes to be interviewed for a teaching job at the education authority, Gilbert attempts to inform her of what could happen there. She, however, pays no attention to his words for she opines that because she is an esteemed teacher back in Jamaica, she will be considered like that in England as well. What is more, she says that she would not accept any school that they would offer as if she had the privilege to do so, claiming that she is to consider only the good ones. Therefore, she chooses to enter the institution alone without taking her husband with her, and he, in turn, stops insisting, letting her experience the truth—the value of white privilege—by herself (Levy, 2004, 373). After she goes out of the building, she starts crying because one of the ones who interviewed her has said:

‘Well, I’m afraid you can’t teach here, … You can’t teach in this country. You’re not qualified to teach here in England. … It doesn’t matter that you were a teacher in Jamaica,’ she went on, ‘you will not be allowed to teach here.’ (Levy, 2004, pp. 375–376) Another episode occurs with Gilbert’s friend, Curtis, who is a religious Christian Jamaican. When he goes to the church, he is requested to go back to his local church because the hue of his skin is much darker to be able to say his prayers at the church that he has attended. This has made him speechless. Such traumatic events do not inspire the black Jamaicans to be approachable and act kindly with the white English society (Levy, 2004, p. 269).

The contact with racism is not limited to the Jamaican spouses—Hortense and Gilbert. Gilbert narrates some of the racial cases experienced by his friends; for example, he claims that Eugene—his Jamaican friend—has been indicted for assaulting an old female who felt panicked because of his skin tone. Eugene, in fact, according to Gilbert, was going on his way as the old lady stumbled onto the curb and fell off in the presence of him. As he had hurried to lend a hand, asking if she had been hurt, the old British female began to screech to the extent that the police appeared. Thus, Eugene was arrested, charged with assaulting an old woman. In the police department, Eugene was demeaned before the lady clarified what had happened. The “White Privilege” here shows how the police had not heard the story from Eugene and instead assumed that the black person had attacked the old woman (Levy, 2004, p. 269).

When the Jamaicans came to Britain, they thought that they would be remunerated for their service during WWII. However, most of the white British had not welcomed them in their vicinities. Consequently, Jamaicans went through hardships in every facet of life. The British administration promised them to afford settlement, but all they came up with is shelters and poor living standards. The black Jamaicans were abandoned, knowing they must fix their problems on their own. They tried to find houses, but while doing so, they experienced the reluctance of the British community. Therefore, they had no choice but to rent the run-down houses that the whites do not accept dwelling in. The documentary filmed by the BBC demonstrated the effort of the Jamaicans in finding accommodations due to the clash between the whites and blacks. On renting advertisements and public places entries, they used signs, such as “Keep

Britain White, and No dogs, no Irish, no Coloreds”. Property owners always came up with excuses to push the Jamaicans away at that time (Upshal, 1998, 00:34:25; 00:46:05–00:48:15).

Levy’s work exposes these conflicts chiefly through the characters of Gilbert and his wife who have resettled in England with high hopes, thinking that they would obtain a decent abode with a yard (Levy, 2004, p. 177). The sense of “White Privilege” and the old image of the black being underprivileged dumbfounds Gilbert, because he has seen the difference between the two periods—preceding and following the war. He used to be welcomed as a soldier, but afterward, he becomes a “golliwog” to them (p. 276). Securing a lodging becomes a critical issue. He says:

So how many gates I swing open? How many houses I knock on? Let me count the doors that opened slow and shut quick without even me breath managing to get inside. Man, these English landlords and ladies could come up with excuses. … as they let me know, so gently spoken, “Well, I would give it to you only I have lots of lodgers and they wouldn’t like it if I let it to a coloured” (Levy, 2004, p. 177) Gilbert can observe the advertisements that read there are vacant rental rooms, and he can see when he talks to the owners that their properties lack lessees, yet he is still rejected and doomed to suffer for the color of his skin. What is happening to Gilbert because of the “White Privilege” has happened to real individuals. Andrea Levy relied on factual experiences of factual Jamaicans in penning her novel. For instance, a Jamaican author called Brooks narrates, in his autobiography, a similar experience when he arrived at Britain, mentioning the disinclination of the English to rent to black individuals. He pens:

I once got a newspaper friend, who was white, to try to rent the same apartment right after I was told it was no longer vacant. Just as I thought would happen my white friend was invited in and offered the apartment for rent. (Brooks & Browne, 2012, p. 22) The despondency of Gilbert has led him to accept living in Queenie’s run-down room, and his sense of pride and independency is damaged due to the existence of the white privilege. When he has remembered the address of Queenie’s house as he escorted Arthur home during the war, he becomes afraid that her husband is another xenophobic

owner, but he tries his luck once more because he is weary of his unproductive searching. Until the moment in which he presses the bell button, distrust and trepidation seize him (Levy, p. 178).

When Hortense follows her husband after half a year, she undergoes similar feelings. She keeps on asking her husband “is this the way the English live?” (Levy, p. 18). She does not know yet that the answer is no, and the reason is her black skin which makes her underprivileged, and thus, cannot live like the whites in England. She has befriended, paid, and married Gilbert because of her dream to live in the UK, but once she has experienced the status quo, she starts to fathom the bitter truth. Rather than having a shabby house, Hortense settles in a squalid room that has a rickety chair, and a fireplace that hardly works with no bathroom. That fireplace serves as her stove. The bathroom is downstairs and is shared with other black tenants and the owner.

Hortense struggles with the cleaning chores, trying to make the place habitable. It is worth noting that the house where the Josephs settle in London is regarded as an above-average status of residence proffered to black Jamaicans following the Second World War. Procter (2003, p. 24) asserts that the overtly bigoted exercises related to market of real estate, along with the housing deficit, during that portion of time led the blacks to live together in cramped conditions in the worst dwellings in England. Paul Gilroy—the founding Director of the Study of Race and Racism Center in University College London—defines the aforementioned houses as having “filthy water-closet, no bathroom, everything cracked, peeling, unpainted, down at heel” (2002, p. 80). Queenie’s residence, where the blacks have settled, meets Gilroy’s description.

An extra issue that is associated with the dwellings is the venues—which the blacks have started to occupy—have become unappealing for the white British, such as Mr. Todd and the rest of Queenie’s neighbors. According to Solomos (1989, p. 39), the British dealt with the coming of the Jamaicans as if their cities and lifestyles are under threat. Racism resulted in the aversion among the newly mixed English society, leading the whites to refuse to live in the same cities where the blacks live. A reference is made by Mr. Todd in a conversation with Queenie, telling her that the neighbors are moving out because of their apprehension over being geographically proximate to the blacks.

At the end of the novel, Bernard himself is willing to sell his house too and settles in another city after he comes back from the war and sees the blacks in his city (Levy, 2004, pp. 360–361). He stops the Josephs from living in that shabby room. Consequently, their suffering is intensified, causing them to be subject to lose everything and head back to Jamaica until Gilbert’s black Jamaican friend, Winston, has offered them a house, also run-down, but with no longer tension in it, where they ought to start a new life with Michael’s and Queenie’s baby (Levy, 2004, pp. 413–414).

Aside from the issues related to finding a residence in England, there are difficulties attached to securing a job. Finding a job, in its broadest sense, is not a complicated task, because the British government itself needed the Jamaicans to expand its workforce, following WWII. The issue that has occurred, however, is the kind of jobs being offered to the black Jamaicans. Despite the educational degrees and potentials, the black Jamaicans are seldom given nonmanual, office jobs with high salaries. Therefore, occupation has also fallen under racialism. Work, based on race, is a privilege to one color, and a disadvantage to another. This happens due to the notion—which was held by the Englishmen—that a person with a non-white skin color is considered inferior, having limited capability and intellect, and thus, cannot be instructed (Flajšarová, 2014, pp. 185–186). Such beliefs condemned the blacks to be prohibited from managerial posts. From the moment the Jamaicans arrived the UK, they “filled the dirtiest, most boring, and worst paid jobs” (Foner, 1978, p. 43). They filled the jobs which the whites did not want. Moreover, there were constraints on the Jamaican who was filling a certain post, such as, no black males ought to co-work with white females, or ought to interact with clienteles. Indications of the problems related to the work applications are permeated throughout Levy’s Small Island.

Gilbert is an experienced driver. He has grown up driving when his family used to work as patissiers. Afterward, he becomes a truck driver in the RAF. He has hated it for he spent half of his life driving. He has strived to become an aviator or an attorney, rather than being a post office driver for the remainder of his life, but it is impossible in the UK, and thus, he accepts to cope with his hardship, because he has become well versed in occupation policies inside England (Levy, 2004, p. 259). Like him, Hortense comes to England with the same hopes and wishes because she does not know yet about

the sense of superiority and aggression that the English have despite everything. Hortense—having a teaching license—gets to be treated like her husband even though she has recommendation letters from the American boarding-school in Jamaica.

It is the white property owner—Queenie Buxton—that stands as an abolitionist between the white bigots and the black race victims. She defends and makes friends with the black people, letting them rent her rooms even though she has been instructed to abhor and marginalize them. She is not affected by the ruthlessly negative behavior of the native white habitants of the area against the black Jamaicans which is chiefly caused by the racial stereotypes instilled in their minds ever since they were born. Unlike Queenie, they have not bothered themselves to spend time with colored individuals whatsoever.

Queenie Buxton’s lodging—wherein most of the events of the novel occur— signifies not only a temporary shelter, yet a spot of liberty and solace for the blacks as well. For the Josephs—aside from the prejudice they are exposed to outdoors on daily basis—the place of residence is the only place in which they are living partially on their terms, until Bernard comes and ruins everything in a matter of days. Furthermore, the dwelling has become their spot in which they grow a sort of bond with the white owner, and the latter’s place where her race treason has occurred. The same exact house has allowed Queenie to be involved in a sexual relationship with a black soldier, Michael Roberts, paying no attention to the dogmas of the surroundings, and thus, setting Queenie and Michael free from the boundaries of racial bigotry.

The white owner goes with Gilbert to a café, and, afterward, to a movie house. No other white person in the novel has accompanied a black person in a friendly manner. Queenie’s points of view are different from those of her husband. Her personality is not influenced negatively by race. Although the presence of the black Jamaicans at her house brings her the hate of the people next door, she keeps on endeavoring to challenge the racial bias. Nonetheless, her efforts become futile when her spouse comes back home. His sudden appearance leads to the evacuation of the Jamaican inhabitants from the house, leaving the city for the outlying districts.

Queenie informs Hortense that she does not feel ashamed or disgraced as she walks or makes relationships with black people. Hortense, in her turn, acts unfriendly to Queenie as if she is socially higher than the Englishwoman. When the latter tags Hortense along to show her around the city—Queenie begins describing things to her— Hortense, however, rudely tells her to stop doing so, conveying that she will ask when she does not know something. This does not let Queenie to hold grudges. Later, when the two women enter a store, Queenie starts, once again, to guide the other woman through—telling her where the brushes, pegs, and nails are—yet no attention is paid by Hortense; thus, when Queenie realizes how serious Hortense is, she becomes silent, bearing no grudge. Despite the behavior of Hortense, Queenie helps her out when the storekeeper does not understand that she wants to buy a washing-up bowl because of her strong accent, while she keeps on trying to convey what she needs to the man in vain (Levy, 2004, p. 188; p. 275).

Queenie is not racist, in fact, she can be considered a race traitor in that she does not mistreat the black people. Queenie’s association with race treason can be easily recognized when her actions are compared to those around her. For example, Queenie hurts Hortense with one thing only since the latter’s arrival, and even in this one, it is unintentional. As Queenie goes into labor, she spoils the best costume that Hortense has. However, Bernard—intentionally—spoils the one that Gilbert has for he thinks that he is the one who has slept with his wife. As the Jamaican begins to defend himself, asserting that he has nothing to do with the newborn baby whatsoever, Queenie’s husband unleashes his racialism, placing the blame on the black race as a whole. Bernard does not feel totally satisfied with this; therefore, he remains cursing Gilbert aloud, and afterward, he physically attacks the Jamaican lodger until blood starts to come out of his nose (Levy, 2004, p. 403).

When Queenie gives birth and finds out that the skin of her baby is black, she does not feel disgraced whatsoever. However, she does not see it is best for baby Michael to stay in the house with a father figure like Bernard. Therefore, the mother requests from the Jamaican couple to take the infant with them. Her action clashes with the perspective of her husband for he objects, arguing that the biracial infant will have a

better life if he becomes a beggar than to be with the two black Jamaicans (Levy, 2004, p. 434).

Once Queenie tells the Josephs to take her own child, they arouse doubts about her motherhood. She asserts that she does want him, yet she wants the best for him, and she cannot provide that by raising him alone while racism still exists. She even begs them—which is something that has rarely happened between white and black people. Bernard claims that he shall assist her in upbringing the child, and that they would tell people that the child is an orphan, and they have decided to adopt him. Queenie says that he is saying such things because the baby is still a baby, but she has serious doubts about her husband’s behaviors when Michael grows into a young person and does something wrong. She believes that Bernard would start using abusive language on the pretext of remedying the wrongdoing of Queenie’s son. She claims that her child will be treated differently by Bernard for the avoidance of the neighbors and relatives to the latter, and that the child will be seeing white people abusing him constantly, which will lead to the conclusion that her son feeling that he does not belong to that place (Levy, 2004, pp. 431–432).

Queenie thinks about what suits her child as a black person. Even though her step damages her psychology, she is still resolute. She offers Gilbert money to take him, but he refused. Then, she tells Gilbert that if she cannot send her baby to an orphanage, because she has read that they are to send the biracial babies to the US, and then reminds him of the incident that happened with the white American soldiers at the movie theater, which lead Gilbert to accept taking the child. She says that she is crying and begging not for her sake, but for the child’s (Levy, 2004, pp. 431–432).

Levy sheds light on other race traitors in her work. When Gilbert comes home upset because of what has happened at the post office with the racist employees, he becomes even more upset as he finds out that his wife has made him unpalatable food; therefore, he leaves the house exasperatedly. As he sits on some bench alone in the street, an old white woman arrives soon after, holding his gloves, saying to him that he has dropped them. Then, she sits next to him, and hands him a piece of cough drop to keep him warm. Gilbert tearfully looked into her eyes, feeling confused of how British people are split into two halves—on the one hand, there is the extremely racist, and on the other,

there is the kind and loving. This incident makes him cry after she goes (Levy, 2004, pp. 269–270).

Michael is another race traitor, but in reverse. There are several episodes that support this claim. When he is in Jamaica, he gives in on the values of his family. He turns down the love of his black relative, Hortense, for the sake of establishing a romantic affair with the white American—Mrs. Ryder—the wife of the boarding-school manager where Hortense works. While in England, he, again, makes a love affair with the white British woman, Queenie. When Mrs. Bernard asks him about his race members back in Jamaica, he announces that he does not belong to that place anymore, and that he has no one there whom he cares for because his parents are deceased, while the truth is that he is sent to England because of his father’s demand, and not dead. Moreover, he claims that he has no intent of heading back to Jamaica after the war ends, because he has plans to live the rest of his life in Canada (Levy, 2004, p. 247).

Hortense, like Michael, is another race traitor in reverse. She thinks she is racially better just because she has a lighter skin than her counterparts, including her husband, Gilbert, and her best friend, Celia. She acts naïvely, prejudicially, and racially especially when she draws a comparison based on color to show her betterment. She does not realize that she does have the same tone, although a little bit brighter. She criticizes her grandmother, for being a slave; her mother, for being not good enough; and her black students, for not being as she wants.

As shown in this chapter, “Race Treason” is clearly discerned in the actions of Queenie Buxton and two black characters—Hortense and Michael—despite the fact that their skin color was left unaltered. This “Race Treason” trait in them is in fact fostered by their Adlerian tasks/problems of life. In the following chapter, an attempt is made to reveal the psychological and societal consequences of a miraculous black-to-white skin color conversion within a community of a black majority and how such an incident prompts an individual with changed skin color—Furo/Frank in Barrett’s Blackass—to betray his race for personal superiority and white privileges access.

CHAPTER FOUR

IGONI BARRETT’S BLACKASS

4.1. Literature Review

Sakiru Adebayo, in his article (2019), studies the convolutions of postcolonial racial projections, along with nationalism and class, within the novel. He employs Frantz Fanon’s ideologies in exploring the psycho-political angles of racism following the cessation of colonialism. Moreover, he analyzes how the work focuses on how the white people’s dominance had not been dissolved with colonization, yet, in fact, it remained to be one of the universal phenomena in the 21st century. Thus, he considers neoliberalism and democracy are still under the yoke of racism.

Julie Iromuanya (2020) compares Barrett’s work—as an afropolitan piece of literature—with the oeuvres of Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Teju Cole, and Taiye Selasi. The author’s use of racial passing questions the covert racial concerns rooted in Afropolitanism. She asserts that the novel tackles the nature of existence, surrealism, and absurdism. She also deploys Fanon’s psychological method. Moreover, the scholar deals with ethnic anxiety, being alienated from one’s self and his/her community.

Vivek Kumar Dwivedi, in his article (2020), stresses that Furo has become a person whom the other black characters practice their ridicule and racism on. The researcher counts on Homi Bhabha’s concept of mimicry in analyzing the text. He goes on stating that the protagonist has faced serious difficulties following the color change, having an obstacle to accept the new identity, and only with time the character has conformed to it.

Steve Ushie Omagu and Stella Agu Chinedu (2020) depict the contempt of the Nigerian régime against its citizens. They endeavor to consider the novel as a postcolonial satire, displaying how the author criticizes notions of gender, class, culture, race, and ambivalence. They also present how Barrett deals with identity and sexuality in a postmillennial Nigerian setting. They claim that the novel deploys satire to tackle foreignness, whiteness, and the Nigerian community. The novel ridicules and calls for snubbing the yearning for western culture at the expense of the motherland culture.

4.2. Individual Psychology in Blackass

The text of the novel reflects the complicated psychology of race and its influence in a distinctive postcolonial context where white skin might be uncommon, yet other representations and effects of white skin do occur. It associates the internalized racism with the repercussions of colonialism. It tackles, through the minds of the characters, the hypothesis that racial bigotry can be found solely in an interracial community. Barrett’s work suggests that a post-colonial space is not necessarily post- racial.

Furo has a leaning type personality. This evaluation is reached through observing his relationship with his mother, Syreeta, and the other characters. He depends on Syreeta in almost everything—money, shelter, support, food, etc. throughout the course of Barret’s novel. He counts on his mother before that. Before meeting Syreeta, he wishes to go back to his mother (Barrett, 2015, p. 39) to find consolation. Even when he is hungry, he tries to count on someone to buy him food. Upon his transformation, Furo’s hunger leads him to sit next to a black person called Igoni and tries to be friendly so as to let the person purchase food for him. Igoni does so, but Frank requests something else, which is to spend a night in Igoni’s residence, but the latter declines and leaves the place (Barrett, 2015, pp. 53–56). The storyline limns how he is not steadfast, not accountable toward others. He is ineffectual and has deficiencies in terms of social interest.

Despite his personality type, Furo Wariboko does not even sit and plan how to tell his family members about his mysterious circumstance, yet, instead, he starts planning to make his getaway even though he is bankrupt. As he gets out, he remembers that he has left his phone behind, but still decides not to go back and abandon it along with his family. Later in the novel, Furo begins to ponder over his family for being forsaken. He remembers how his mother used to work hard, dedicating her life to helping her offspring so that they succeed in their lives. He starts suffering psychologically because of pangs of conscience, yet he still believes he is unable to return to them as a white man.

Throughout the course of the novel, Furo figures out that being a white person in Lagos, Nigeria is not something easy psychologically even though he has accepted being white enthusiastically because of constantly feeling a surge of anxiety about getting exposed. What makes him become happy upon the transformation of his skin hue is that his Adlerian life tasks are to be solved—the task of work, the task of sex, and so on. Furo starts having access to a new culture, new institutions which he has been prohibited from before.

The new conducts of Furo that take place upon the change say a lot about his psychology. Furo’s old friends and family members are abandoned by him. This situation means that he has preferred to carry on with the task of work and sex upon the task of friendship and family. His social estrangement represents the outcome of his newly found superiority feelings. Namely, he is sure that his old friends—whose presence have fulfilled his task of friendship at one time—will be replaced by new members. Furthermore, he has abandoned his family because they have acted as a threat, along with his old friends, against his new persona, that is ideal to others, and his psychology, that has become filled with confidence.

Furo’s skin change is indefinable. The author does not utter if the change is miraculous or happened in a dream manifestation. Therefore, it is not affirmed if he is really a white man, or just dreaming of being one. The author left a hint, however, suggesting what is happening might be a dream by saying through the narrator “Furo Wariboko awoke this morning to find that dreams can lose their way and turn up on the wrong side of sleep” (Barrett, 2015, p. 3). Moreover, the narrator has said that “he was alone in this lingering dream” (p. 4). It is not confirmed whether he uses the word “dream” in its literal meaning, or just to describe the dreamlike situation that has happened.

Frank Whyte may have dreamed of this as a form of deliverance, as an ease upon his psychological pressure—given that he has an important event, i.e., the interview, and so, due to his stress he has dreamed of such a scenario. According to Adler (1997, pp. 88–90), there is a mutual connection between the problems and hardships of a person in real life and his or her dreams. He postulates that a dream is a path to one’s thoughts, desires, and feelings. In a dream, one can see things related to the aforementioned items.

Sometimes, they are a means to overcompensate for the inferiority feelings or the inadequacies of a person. Therefore, if what happens to Furo was a dream, then it is his mind that is showing him how impossible it is to have what the white person has or that he finds temporal comfort in his long dream being transmogrified as a white person.

Furo Wariboko makes an effort to maintain the esteem and respect for his new appearance. He implements more than one measure to achieve that end—he changes his clothing style, he strives to learn the accent of white people, he changes his name as well. Other black people have helped him in attaining this task by showing respect to him and become as punctilious as possible with their locution when he is present. For instance, Victor Ikhide —Headstrong—speaks to him “in a podium voice (Barrett, 2015, p. 215). When seeing people treat him like this, he begins adopting a manner of a white master—in its historical sense—and starts treating Headstrong with abhorrence in a peremptory tone. He forces Ikhide to comprehend the relationship between slaves and their masters.

Furo used to be plunged in feelings of inferiorities as a black man. This is because he was at the rock bottom of the social scale. He welcomes the new change that has happened that let him find a solution to his problems; therefore, he does not consider his transformation as a problem, yet a satisfactory resolution to his previous problems. It offers him to lead his life the way he has wanted without obstacles. It is given that he suffers from being black. He has instantaneously started to have compensations for his inferiorities. However, even though he is in a position of authority and superiority—as a white individual—the author demonstrates the impact of his psychology and the generated feelings that accompany the situation of being white in a society laden with black people, i.e., Furo’s sense of being estranged, which, per se, triggers him to sense inferiorities.

Throughout Blackass, Frank strives to fix the issue of his black remnants by resorting to toxic chemical creams—which are widespread products in Nigeria—for lightening his skin. The profusion of such creams is seen in Syreeta’s room, where she puts a collection of lightening creams on her dressing table. The commonness of those products signifies the consideration of whiteness or lightness as a commodity to be

purchased. He strives to accomplish his wish of having a total body of white skin even if temporarily.

Because the creams that Frank makes use of are, in fact, corrosive substances, he starts suffering from burning, itching, and other uncomfortable side effects, while he puts his efforts to erase his black skin tone. As his inflammation establishes the protective crust over the wound, his buttocks become even darker than before, making the lower rear part “robustly black” (Barrett, 2015, p. 255) due to the excessive use of skin pigmentation products. Therefore, the endeavors that Frank makes in order to be white ends up with failure.

When his buttocks remain black, they begin to serve as a remaining inferiority. He tries to overcome it by using Syreeta’s compilation of skin-lightening make-up products. Based on Pierre (2012, p. 106), such practices show the correlation between the usage of “products that claim to bleach out … dark skin”, colorism, and inferiority/superiority feelings. In spite of all of his essays to lighten his buttocks, they continue to be insurmountably black, which serve as the only thing that threatens the newly established superiority feelings. They trigger the feeling of apprehension in him for as long as the “vestiges of his old self remained with him, his new self would never be safe from ridicule and incomprehension” (Barrett, 2015, p. 126).

It is worth noting that it is not just Furo who has inferiorities in the novel. In simple terms, Furo has superiority feelings, while the rest have inferiority feelings. The other black folks themselves are loathing each other in Igoni Barrett’s work in that they frantically strive to gain recognition from Furo who acts as an idol to them—given that he is white. All the characters that he encounters have such feelings, feeling inferior due to their racial category. In the novel, there are episodes where “Nigerians fall over themselves to rubbish their country and curry favour themselves with the white Furo” (Barrett, 2015, p. 89). Everyone whom Frank encounters incline to show the best image of themselves during his attendance. He is favored over the other coworkers who have black skin, not due to his eﬃciency, but to his whiteness. As Opyrchal (2015) contends, inferiority is instilled in their minds because of the imposed culture that cooperated to do so during colonization.

The sense of inferiority of the black characters in the novel is observed in their manner by which they consider and treat Furo. As a white person, he attends the interview he is supposed to go to as a black person at Haba! Ltd., hoping to work as a salesperson. All of the company officials there think that Furo has done something wrong because the job post he has applied for is not dedicated to superior people such as him—being white. Nevertheless, as he preserves to have it, those in charge instantaneously promote him—with no attention being paid to any evaluation, potentials, or assessment—and thus they assign him as an executive in the marketing department. The only necessary qualification to them is that he has his white skin. He walks out joyful, having achieved the task of pursuing a useful occupation even though no efforts are expended.

Furo Wariboko’s sense of fitting psychologically in his society is formed by his social advancement. In the beginning of the events, Frank is “seen as a freak: exposed to wonder, invisible to comprehension” despite his presence in his own community (Barrett, 2015, p. 11). Therefore, he has to leave his town—which is populated by black working-class citizens—and live in Victoria Island—which is the principal region for business in Lagos and is populated by wealthy upper-class individuals—to benefit from the privileges of being white to the full, which in itself increases his feelings of being superior. Moreover, to access the welfare of superiority, Frank ought to remove himself psychologically from the sense of blackness, i.e., in this case, inferiority. In an episode, the author shows how Frank relinquishes membership to blackness so as to accept his brand-new upgraded superior self:

Furo picked up the newspaper and gazed at the face bearing his name. . . . black skin: that’s all he saw. The person wasn’t him. He had moved on beyond that . . . he strode to the tall mirror over the vanity table and stared into the face of his new self . . . He knew at last he had nothing to fear. He was a different person. (Barrett, 2015, pp. 155– 156) Ayling, a critic, notices that to become “recognizable and accepted as local elites”, distinguishable Nigerian characteristics ought to be kept (2015, p. 463). For Furo, whiteness and everything it entails is something that cannot be completely attained. Even when he is involved in his pretense, the author clarifies that his main

character’s shift to whiteness is continually in process, i.e., he has gained the skin hue first, which leads to the social image, which leads to the work post, which leads to change his appellation, and then he starts to deal with the accent. These are inferiorities to be compensated. All of which are compensated gradually, except for the intact buttocks.

The author, through the communication between Furo and other characters, expresses how the central character’s white skin is being received psychologically according to different genders. Women who encounter Furo; for example, Ekemini, Syreeta, Yuguda’s daughter, Tosin, and the woman in the soup kitchen, treat him in a special friendly way, ready to please him. However, the men, like Obata, the person in the soup kitchen, the applicants, whom he encounters—except Arinze and the security guard—show him a sense of contempt and belligerence (Barrett, 2015, p. 23). This is due to their own inferiority feelings.

Furo has what the other characters lack. Therefore, they either hate him because they see he has chances better than them, or they like him for he represents a potential resource for them. Women strive to approach him, hoping to have a white man, while the men do so due to their awareness that he has privileges, i.e., superiorities that they do not have. That said, even Arinze’s behavior toward Furo is exhibited for a reason associated with whiteness. He tries to exploit Furo to fulfil his task of work given that, according to his understanding, a white man is prone to bring about prosperity to the company.

When Syreeta takes a glance at Furo’s new passport, she becomes doubtful concerning the Nigerian names that he holds. Frank prepares a false background story days before she asks; therefore, he tells her that he is adopted by black parents (Barrett, 2015, p. 121). Syreeta, knowing the Nigerian culture better than Furo does, due to her experience, replies by claiming that she “didn’t know it was possible for black people to adopt white people” (p. 122). The author employs Syreeta’s belief that black individuals are unable to foster white children as a way to imply that the black Nigerians believe that they are inferior to whites, i.e., they are not qualified, or have the resources, to adopt a white child.

In a conversation with Tosin, one of his colleagues, Frank is questioned about how he has handled the way people look at him in Lagos. He claims that he is becoming used to that as though he is being victimized. Tosin replies by stating that she is “ashamed” (Barrett, 2015, p. 220) of the negativity of the black Nigerians and their mistreatment of the white people even though the latter have unearned privileges in the country. Her naïveté leads her to commiserate with white people in general because of getting stared at in the cities of Nigeria.

Headstrong, on the other hand, opposes Tosin’s standpoint and says that white individuals are being treated as if they are “superstars” in Nigeria (Barrett, 2015, p. 220). Headstrong, also holds a positive view about white people, thinking that people with white skin tone are, in fact, better than black people. Afterward, as Frank is asked about where he is originally from, the latter lies and says that he is from the United States of America (p. 222). The author employs Headstrong, like Tosin, as a different carbon copy of the regular Nigerian person. He, like them, believes that they are superior to black people. Headstrong says:

White people are not like us. They treat everybody in their country with respect. In fact, they treat us black people special. A policeman cannot just go and stop a black person on the street and be asking for his ID card. Not like our own police. Yes, listen, let me tell you! Even if [white men] want to deport you from their country, you can tell them that they’re fighting in your village and all your family are dead, that you’re a refugee and you want asylum. Because of human rights, they can’t do you anything. You see what I’m saying? Those are better people.’ (220–221) When he becomes white, Furo Wariboko undergoes not just inferiority feelings, but superiority feelings as well. Those around him have instilled these feelings in him. For instance, Alhaji Yuguda—a CEO of a company—asks Furo to work at his construction company filling an executive position, telling him “‘I need a leader who can command respect and inspire fear. That person is you’” (Barrett, 2015, p. 136). Furo does not believe of such things at first “‘Inspire fear, command respect – me?’” (p. 136). He feels surprised of the unanticipated veneration and positive belief in his potentials. The quotation, at the same time, shows the inferiorities that Yuguda suffers from. He goes on saying:

‘You’ll get respect because you’re white. They’ll fear you because you’re Nigerian. You know the tricks, you understand the thinking, you speak the language. You can figure out their schemes, and you’ll know how to block them. Catch me some scapegoats and I’ll deal with them, then you just watch the others fall into line. You’ll get some training, of course. We’ll send you for management workshops, leadership seminars, all of that. But fear and respect – and power – those are your real tools. Your power is half a million naira per month. You’ll also get a car and a furnished apartment in Asokoro.’ (p. 136). For the deception to accomplish, that is, to achieve undisputed superiority feelings, his belonging to whiteness ought to be incontrovertible; therefore, the part of his body that is left unaffected when the rest have been changed completely has kept him bothered, reminding him that he is only masqueraded in a supernaturally white veneer. Therefore, when he becomes white, he strives to get rid of all the “vestiges” that tie him to his old reality (Barrett, 2015, p. 126). This aspiration to run away from his history is motivated by his fictional finalism.

When Syreeta calls Frank by his old name, he becomes irritated and starts shouting at her (Barrett, 2015, p. 231). It is a case in point that shows how the features of his old self remind him of his inferiorities. Another instance of being irritated when using his old name, or anything associated with his old self, takes place with one of his coworkers, Zainab, as she humorously proposes to give Frank a Nigerian name (Barrett, 2015, p. 217). He revolts, manifesting his defense of his whiteness and superiority. He develops from checking his skin status frequently—to see if it is still white or has returned black—to a state wherein he becomes disgusted when associating a black characteristic to him.

While booting up his new laptop computer, Frank Whyte attempts to check his social media accounts. In the meanwhile, he logs into his email account and he is compelled to see bulks of emails have been sent to his account from his mother’s email address, expressing how terribly worried she is about him. Following this fleeting instant, he deactivates all of his accounts without any reluctance or “struggle” to open and read all of the other received emails (Barrett, 2015, p. 180). This shows how he keeps on failing at the task of family.

On one occasion, he dials his old phone number, and his mother picks it up, and the son goes through a psychological pain associated with his mother, yet his white skin and new lifestyle act as an effective deterrent against speaking with his mother. As his confidence in himself keeps on developing, the psychological side effect, that urges him to talk to his mother, lessens to a great extent. The more days he lives, the more distant he becomes to his family, and the more he believes that he does not need any of his family members, feeling superior to them with no regard to their enduring caring, passion, and memories.

As Frank Whyte departs the office and heads to the car with his driver and colleague, Victor Ikhide, heading to Syreeta’s residence, Frank becomes vexed due to Headstrong’s act of spitting while speaking. Ultimately, Frank enrages and says to his colleague “‘shut up’” (Barrett, 2015, p. 189), and even utters a threat against his colleague—that he will tell Ayo Abu Arinze about it to get him fired. Moreover, he orders him by saying “‘don’t call me [white]’” (Barrett, 2015, p. 185). These unfriendly words further demonstrate Frank’s shift from inferiority feelings as a black man, trying to find any job post, to superiority feelings as a white man, having an occupation and being authoritative. What is more, Frank feels satisfied and delighted that he has rebuked his colleague. As he returns home, he starts boasting off in front of Syreeta concerning his own authoritative voice has handled Headstrong’s impertinence” (Barrett, 2015, p. 190).

One of the examples that demonstrate the superiority feelings of Frank occurs when he is about to go to work on a day. When his girlfriend, Syreeta, is making him some food, he starts to think of her as “flatteringly domestic” (Barrett, 2015, p. 173). As he uses this description of her, he believes that he is superior and that she is being as previously indicated because she worships him and understands that she is inferior. When Arinze assigns a car for Frank to pick him up from his place of residence to the work place and vice versa, he feels dissatisfied with the assigned car model, claiming that it does not suit his impeccable character, and that only women would drive such vehicles (Barrett, 2015, p. 184). In this respect, the scene unravels two things about Frank—first, it demonstrates his constant growing feelings of superiority; second, it displays that he does not appreciate the fact that—despite his hatred to racial bigotry

prior to his transmogrification—he becomes a sort of gendered racist himself, having stereotypes about women, considering them inferior to men, which is another face of racism.

His psychology keeps on being unrest when he recurrently starts receiving anonymous calls that he ignores, followed by text messages which read that the sender knows Frank very well and is going to uncover Frank’s secret and say the “truth” to everybody in the near future (Barrett, 2015, p. 233). Frank direly tries to call the person back to dissuade him or her because he can have “no rest” and that he is incapable of living in disquietude unless he does “cut off all ties with his former life” (Barrett, 2015, p. 233). The anonymous person turns out to be Igoni, the person he once has had lunch with. Then, Frank tells Igoni about the negative things that he has done as a white man to black individuals throughout the course.

The concept of white skin that is shown in the novel illustrates the Nigerian projection of white superiority, which is something promoted psychologically during colonialism, but they are not aware of it, caring only for achieving social mobility and economy. British Nigerian race studies critic, Ayling, made a research about the Nigerian education system. Her article brings about critical understandings of how the superiority of the whites and colonization are disseminated in a societal and systemic way. The findings of her work do help in investigating and comprehending how white skin is translated in respect of domination and inferiority in Barrett’s Blackass. She finds:

Historical factors, such as colonization and imperialism, as well as the continuous perpetuation of hegemonic discourses such as West is best have not only made the West dominant and non-Western countries like Nigeria the dominated, but have also successfully constructed Whiteness and White culture as a highly valuable symbolic and cultural capital. (Ayling, 2015, p. 460) So, the sense of considering the white race as a superior race category goes back to Frank’s education period. Furo remembers the analysis of his own teacher as the latter critiques Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart (1958) claiming that “the white man is a symbol of progress. Okonkwo fought against the white man and lost. Progress always wins, that’s why it’s progress” (Barrett, 2015, p. 31). Such analysis has imposed both,

the sense of inferiority to those who are black, and the sense of superiority to those who are white. Furo has finished his Eurocentric education, holding the conviction about the physical and mental superiority of the Europeans. The Nigerian cases that Ayling (2015) conducted her research on consign to white British upper class; their accent, behaviors, and etiquette hoping to equip their offspring with western qualities of mind and of character (p. 455).

That said, social and psychological developments that support white superiority in a contemporary context is documented by Barrett; chiefly, how these developments could impact the ideals of the Africans and their psyches. Such developments are not organic, yet temporal and spatial in essence. In Barrett’s work, this assumption is demonstrated through Frank’s surprising discovery of Syreeta’s purpose of being close in her relationship with him. He finds that besides her liking of his white skin tone, she exploits his being to have admittance—by having a biracial child from him—to the “babies club” (Barrett, 2015, p. 293), i.e., the elite association of Nigerian biracial children’s mothers, which is managed by Europeans who have white skin (p. 136). For her, having a biracial offspring would help her attain social improvement (Adebayo, 2019, p. 7).

Although Furo has noticed that he is of particular interest to Syreeta, he deals with the task of love and sex by making a relationship with her for being a wealthy female whom he can depend on. He not only has sexual intercourse with her, but he also resides and eats in her house. He becomes fixated on pursuing self-interested objectives throughout the text. Syreeta perfectly fits his leaning personality type until she starts asking for something in return for her caring and kindness, which is to have a child from him.

According to the narration, he used to ask help from his family and friends as he is black, but as he changed, asking for help from certain individuals has changed with it. At first, Wariboko spends his life as a poor Nigerian person. He has not achieved economic prosperity. He resides along with his family even though he is thirty-three years old with no certain job, relying on them in terms of his needs. However, from the very first moment of his transmogrification, he decides to abandon them. For instance, when he wakes up, his mother comes to his bedroom door to see him, but he does his

best to evade being exposed so she could not see his new reddish hair color, nor his bright skin.

Despite Frank Whyte’s best efforts in striving to detach himself from his family—which represents an integral part of his past—he is obliged to confront them. Namely, he is compelled to face his fear, i.e., the growing concern that he has always tried to allay is rather bound to intensify, once again, leading to the escalation of his feelings of inferiority and the lessening of his feelings of superiority because of Igoni, who, doing it on his own initiative, calls Frank’s family and informs them about their son’s current whereabouts.

4.3. The Black Instigators and Race Treason in Blackass

Barrett’s novel is written based on the notion of Kafka’s Metamorphosis (1915), yet in a new sense—employing racial dimensions within the storyline of the novel. The work explicates the life experience of its central character, Furo, also known as Frank Whyte later on. Furo Wariboko is originally a down-and-out black individual from Nigeria in his early 30s, striving to secure a job. Through an inexplicable phenomenon, he wakes up one day, finding that his black skin color has changed to white. All of his body, except for his buttocks, have been altered, color-wise. When transmuted, entering the phase of Frank Whyte—a name he adopts for himself although he is neither literally frank nor white—Furo faces the Nigerian community as a person being promoted by his white skin. The title of the novel is associated with Furo’s sole residue after the transmogrification.

Observing Furo as merely a black individual endeavoring to gain whiteness would result in an incomprehensive critique. Therefore, it is found valuable to approach the transmogrified person as a white individual as well so as to be able to comprehend the distinctions between the two races in Nigeria during a postcolonial epoch. As Shavers (2016, p. 19) asserts, despite the notional resemblance with Kafka’s novella, Blackass is concerned with the characteristics of one’s skin hue and the advantages gained from which. By transforming Black Furo to a white character, the author introduces a sort of postcolonial destabilization by situating the white race at the

epicenter, supplanting the so-called the Other. Furo Wariboko, or Frank Whyte, develops to be the Other, but will not suffer prejudicially.

Even though black individuals in the narrative oftentimes consider the white individual as a “historical opportunist”, the novel demonstrates how the blacks are categorized as naïve and “gullible victims” of manipulation (p. 12). The depicted Nigerian figures, while they interact with Frank, value his status of being white, considering him as a modus operandi for their social mobility (Barrett, 2015, p. 10). People whom Furo encounters desire to get a portion of the influence and affluence which his skin tone offers him. The narrator of the novel reports that a “white man in Lagos has no voice louder than the dollar sign branded on his forehead” (Barrett, 2015, p. 7).

Thinking he is well-off, ladies-of-the-night strive to engage with him, believing that they are going to receive a large bonus for pleasing a white individual. Based on Hook (2014, p. 117), the indication that the black individuals are convinced that the white man is rich unravels the truth that is concerned with the speciﬁc arrangement of authority, economy, and society in the blacks’ settings where they continuously honor and authorize white people and are likely to depreciate and deprive black people.

Even though, according to figures in the novel, the white people’s skin hue is, by definition, an advantage, they are considered outsiders in places which are constituted of majority of black populace such as Nigeria. For instance, Frank’s friend, Syreeta does not believe that he is originally Nigerian. Although he informs her that his birthplace is Nigeria, she keeps on showing skepticism because of the inability to comprehend the odd occurrence that a white man is born and bred in Nigeria. When they converse with each other about the matter, she carries her inability to accept the idea that he is Nigerian further, and Furo responses:

‘I’ve told you I’m Nigerian’

‘But you’re white!’ exclaimed Syreeta

‘So you mean I can’t be white and Nigerian?’

‘That’s not what I’m saying. I’m asking how it happened’. (Barrett, 2015, p. 137)

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Consequently, characters in the novel see it unusual to believe that Furo has both, being Nigerian and being white at the same time. They constantly ask him about his whereabouts despite his Nigerian passport and Nigerian accent. Due to their sweeping assertion that he is not of Nigerian origin, he is forced to tell a falsehood, stating that he is from the USA. The complicated interaction among races in Nigeria demonstrates the difference. As Barrett shows, it is extraordinary to observe a white individual in some of the Nigerian cities (Barrett, 2015, p. 7); however, in other parts, the majority of the residents have never confabulated with white people, only having stereotypes about their nature and being (Barrett, 2015, p. 9).

The author utilizes this example to demonstrate the way in which colonial ideologies have safeguarded the reinforcement of the white supremacy and preserved the persistence of racial bigotry against the blacks in the international order. Therefore, even though nearly half a century is passed since decolonization, white individuals keep on enjoying special treatment as they revisit their previous colonial territories. They avail themselves of the entitlements, authority, and acceptability whom the native subjects of these colonies are basically deprived of.

The depiction of the presupposition that white skin shall result in advantages, whereas black skin shall result in disadvantages in spaces like Lagos—having a black majority populace—not only demonstrates the discrimination triggered by skin tone, but also, shows contradictions to the African movements standpoints and philosophies which hold the notion that Africans are the victims of outsiders. The novel shows that they themselves victimize each other, even though the influence of colonial methodologies does exist.

After he gets out of the passport department—when decided to change his name—Frank tries to reach Syreeta’s place, but he is unable to do so, because the black drivers of the taxicabs spurn to pick him with a standard fare after seeing him white, believing he is rich and simpleton (Barrett, 2015, p. 103). He becomes desperate. It is not until a woman comes to Frank and offers to help him find a taxi. She asks him not to let the drivers see him next to her so that they would not ask for a higher fare than usual. The plan works and he manages to go back to Syreeta by virtue of the black woman (p. 104). This instance of the taxi drivers shows how racism and racial

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discrimination is bizarre compared to the situation in which the whites discriminate the blacks.

Barrett does not romanticize the white skin or depicts it without deficiencies. He portraits his main character as an incompetent and having a sweat disorder. Therefore, he indirectly gives a sense that white superiority is shallow and defective, yet its supremacy is acquired through propaganda. The author lampoons the extent of self- contempt whom the black characters expose themselves to so as to support white superiority, or at least leverage from it, in one way or another, which is presented as his major argument.

In essence, the novel’s plot demonstrates the notion of the white privilege, which, according to Sydelle (2007), the Nigerians themselves call “white man’s magic” to denote the special behavior that a white man receives, which ought to lead them to positive ends. It shows how the concept of racial passing for whites results in excessive unearned advantages, whereas the Nigerian black individuals ought to carry a burden on a par with their African American, and Afro-Caribbean counterparts in the previous chapters.

The space that Barrett has depicted in his story—Lagos—is replete with black subjects who have qualifications which meet the requirements of work applications, yet their potentials are mismanaged due to racial favoritism to which Furo falls victim prior to his transformation (Murphy, 2017, p. 292). The pivotal role of this case is highlighted so as to emphasize how his environment makes use of the black people—despite their potentials—with menial jobs, while white people—despite their incapacities—run managerial posts.

While outside the house, on his way to the interview, people start gazing at him, whispering among each other (Barrett, 2015, p. 10). He feels anxious and hateful toward them. He stops a random woman called Ekemini and asks her about time. She answers and becomes curious about him—how a white man is walking in Lagos. She tried to approach him and find a taxi for him. He tells her that he has no money, so, she started to “drew away from him” (p. 13) and becomes rather skeptical. This makes Wariboko

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lie, claiming that someone has stolen his money. This lie causes Ekemini to naively give him money in order to reach the company.

At the company, the receptionist does not make him wait or line up as the other interviewees. She escorts him to the interviewer right away. When he gets in a sort of trouble by being apprehensive in front of the interviewer—Obata—due to the inconsistency of his accent, appellation, and skin color, the CEO, Ayo Abu Arinze, enters and saves Furo. Arinze asks him whether he is into reading, Furo tells him he is not. Despite this answer, the conversation leads Arinze to give Furo the position of marketing executive, instead of rejecting him for not having the requirements, with a salary that is double to Furo’s expectation.

The blacks themselves allow Furo to become privileged. The “White Privilege” can be oversimplified by resorting to Fanon’s statement by saying “You are rich because you are white, you are white because you are rich” (2005, p. 5). This is what Igoni Barrett struggles to depict in his novel, i.e., the involvement of the blacks in racism, supremacy, and wealth in a Nigerian atmosphere. Consequently, Frank Whyte, as a subject of being taken advantage of, uncovers a great deal about the disproportionate distribution of human resources, which is, in essence, the principal reason that leads the characters to believe that Frank has an economic superiority.

As he gets out of the company, finishing his interview, he walks lonely striving to find a place to stay in, and food to eat. He spends the whole day without eating anything. He has preferred to experience such hardships as long as he does not go back to his family. He finally enters a soup kitchen. Mercy—the woman who serves the food—is surprised to see a white man there, and thus, she gives him an extra slice of meat, which makes another customer to revolt since she has treated him unfairly earlier and so the latter tries to belittle her amusement to see a white man. Therefore, a quarrel takes place between the customer and the woman. Furo does not involve himself in the quarrel and leaves the place (pp. 26–30).

As Ansell (2013, p.136) argues, the depiction of Furo as a white person in the literary work does not highlight the process of reverse racism. When he becomes white, individuals assist him and offer him opportunities which he would not receive when

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being black. The author uses imagery to demonstrate “White Privilege” even in terms of hygiene. The places that are settled by black people are laden with “road-kill carcasses” and “stench” (p. 49). Offices (p. 21) and districts run by black people (p. 36) are shown as grimy, while the districts inhabited by white people are clean. This example shows how the system takes care of one race over the other. It portrays how the blacks have to live in negligence unlike the whites even in a country, the majority of which is comprised of their own racial category.

As a white individual, Frank does not undergo any kind of racial discrimination or prejudice whatsoever due to his white skin, but has only encountered doubts because of the unlikelihood to see native white-skinned people in modern Nigeria. Nobody has made him feel psychologically or socially inferior. In spite of his difficulties, his white skin has secured him a work that his previous skin color could not. In fact, his hardships and problems that arise while being a white individual are unquestionably of no importance in comparison of the difficulties associated with being a black person in Nigeria or elsewhere in the world.

Frank asks Syreeta to lodge with her until he gets paid; she agrees even though she knows nothing about him except for being white and Nigerian. Then, she helps him apply for a passport. She also gives him a cell phone and money. She mediates between him and one of the passport staff whom she knows to help Frank with the application process. Another occurrence of how the blacks contribute to sustaining the “White Privilege” takes place when, one day, after the two have lunch, they decide to go to a public place called Victoria Garden City. As Furo reaches the gate, the security walks toward Furo, and asks if the latter needs help with anything. As Frank declines thankfully, the security member insists and brings him a chair. Meanwhile, another Nigerian person politely strives to enter the gate, but the same security employee refuses to let him to go into the Garden City for an unspecified reason and scolds him even though the visitor has stated that there are people waiting for him inside. All he has received from the security, however, is shouting and ordering him to retrieve. Albeit the security loses his temper after this incident, he goes back to Frank and becomes friendly once again as though nothing has happened (pp.130–132).

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Even when Syreeta is letting Furo escort her as she pays her friend a visit, the servant there alters her behavior once she sees Frank Whyte in order to express her deference (Barrett, 2015, p. 133). Baby—Syreeta’s friend—when welcoming the two, greets Furo with an “appraising gaze” (p. 133). Syreeta begins bragging about the western nature of Furo in the meantime. Everything Syreeta says about Furo, Baby agrees with her even though she has just made the acquaintance of him. He benefits from advantages, occupation propositions, admiration, accessibility to authority, and other unearned benefits (McIntosh 2003). As Furo interrogates the moral decision of Syreeta—insisting to have a biracial child to enter the maternity club of interracial offspring—the latter reminds Furo of his privileges by stating “[Y]ou are a white man, you don’t have to [have sex with] anyone for favours” (Barrett, 2015, p. 201).

When Arinze gives books to Frank and asks him to go to a company called TASERS, it is Headstrong—Furo’s colleague—who carries them all the way, whereas Frank is empty-handed while walking up the stairs. When he meets with Umkoro, the CEO of the company, rather than buying the books, he offers him a job post, holding the notion that Frank’s white skin could bring prosperity in terms of advertisement to his company. The only thing that makes Furo refuse is that he believes he cannot work under pressure (Barrett, 2015, pp. 195–197). On his way down, Frank sees a group of women and buy multiple copies from him, which impresses Arinze because he has struggled to sell them beforehand but without success.

This previous paragraph serves as another instance of how the “White Privilege” works. It also sheds light on the selfishness of Frank—given that he has refused to work for Umkoro because of personal reasons, not because he is professionally committed for the company he works at. Kasumo—another client of Haba!—offers Frank a job post, asserting that white individuals “believed anything they were sold by one of their own” (Barrett, 2015, p. 228). Frank has rejected the offer for the same reasons that have led him to refuse the one offered by Umkoro.

Laura Murphy—a critic—asserts that the way to achieve a good level of social mobility is through the ideology of hustling or working hard; Furo’s means of hustling becomes his white pigment (2017, p. 292). Only after the change of Furo’s skin color does he attain economic success, social image, and reputation. He overcomes every

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obstacle related to society and moneymaking because Furo is, as Bady (2016) states, “inundated with job proposals and propositions”. Rather than leveraging the things that he has acquired following the transmogrification to unravel the truth to his Nigerian counterparts—that they are duped by the stereotypes associated with the whites—to let them learn to behave toward the black person on a par with the white person, he acts selfishly and only thinks of himself, not his race.

White superiority continues to be an undisputed model which is verified through the privileges the white person gains, and, also through the commonness of discrimination against the dark skin hue. Therefore, it is safe to say that black skin functions as a deterrent to having success during colonialism to a great extent, and after colonialism to some extent. Thus, Furo considers what establishes the hitch is his race, i.e., the black race, not the racist system that supports or believes in white superiority. For instance, at the company of Yuguda, the daughter of the CEO welcomes Frank and overlooks his boss, Arinze, because of his skin color, thinking that Frank himself is the manager.

Halting in front of Furo, she exchanged glances with him in mutual appraisal, and his eyes locked on her thin lips as she said, ‘How do you do?’ Her Ivy League accent bore the faintest trace of a Hausa intonation. ‘I’m fine, thank you,’ Furo replied. He waited for her to greet Arinze in turn, but she again addressed her words to him. ‘My father will join you soon. Do you want your assistant to be present at the meeting?’ Furo reddened in embarrassed silence, which he finally broke with the stammered words, ‘He’s not – this – Mr Arinze is my boss.’ ‘I see,’ the woman said, her tone unruffled. (Barrett, 2015, p. 160) One of the wealthiest figures in Nigeria—Alhaji Yuguda—makes a proposition for Frank, offering him a great deal of money to opt out of Haba! so as to work for his organization instead. This takes place due to Yuguda’s conviction that doing business with people with white skin color adds more prestige and will result in a better income than working with those with black skin. Due to this, black individuals in Nigeria advocate white superiority and colonial ideologies indirectly. In the novel, during their meeting with Yuguda, Arinze, claims that they do not trade in Nigerian literature, stating that they “only sell world-class books” (2015, p. 239).

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The episodes within the novel illuminate how the black skin is treated as sign of inferiority by the blacks themselves. The “world-class books” is tantamount to advancement and “competence” which are both connected to light-skinned people’s superiority. The lecture that Furo has had about Achebe’s novel—Things Fall Apart— during his education lead him to believe that the black race is appropriate only when it comes to nonmetropolitan settings, yet the white race is proper when it comes to success and evolvement.

The author’s utilization of the “White Privilege” in his novel carries not just the sense of authority and affluence but speaks to the difficulty to achieve anything by the nonwhite people as well, which defines the reality of the white people in Nigeria who live without restrictions. Although the condition of Furo—changing from blackness to whiteness—is a form of race treason, given that he embraces it, it also functions as an example of racial passing, which, according to Bennett (1998, p. 36), was common during the epoch of slavery, when black people—enslaved or free—were given authorization to go from one place to another without the company of white people by handing them a piece of written matter called pass. Furo’s white skin has become tantamount to his passing document.

While on his way to work, Syreeta says that his salary should be higher than it is at the time being due to his “oyiboness” (Barrett, 2015, p. 174), i.e., his whiteness, and that he even deserves a much better post. The course of events associated with Frank persistently reiterates his dues as a white person despite the consecutive challenges that he experiences due to his accent and buttocks. He feels pain in his buttocks due to the lightening cream that he has been using. Despite the pain, he has insisted on keeping using it (p. 148). The author employs the scene of lightening cream as a way to signify Frank’s anxiety to remove himself from his black history. Regardless of the pain, Frank supposes that he must put more cream over his buttocks in order to make it “as white as the rest of him” (p. 148). This expresses his desperation to dispose of every evidence to his original blackness.

All of Syreeta’s black friends are espoused to white individuals. Black Furo used to dislike this kind of women, because no matter how refined and successful he would become, a white man would still be preferred over him, but now he declares that such a

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“view of them had softened” (Barrett, 2015, p. 137). He even starts aspiring to be a heartbreaker. Tosin, one of Frank’s female colleagues asks him to go out with her to have a lunch together. He refuses, not accepting to go out until she asks again (p. 202).

As he is spending his leisure time, he espies a column in a newspaper about him being missing and thus becomes distressed. He tears the page, put it in the toilet bowl, and flushes it with no reluctance. It is at this time that he feels that he needs to change his name to Frank Whyte so as to his status remains intact (Barrett, 2015, p. 155). He does not have any scruples about making his family dejectedly worried whatsoever. Rather, he is only afraid if Syreeta or Arinze see him in the newspaper, revealing his true self. His top priority is keeping his whiteness. The acts of betraying his race are demonstrated through his aspired coexistence with the usage of the acquired white skin to a maximum advantage, having an aversion to his black skin and everything that his old race represents. White skin is, to Furo, a unique opportunity that ought to be seized by all means (Bady, 2016).

Frank Whyte himself adamantly refuses the probability to return to his old skin hue. In this respect, the narrator remarks that because of “everything he had suﬀered from, the mere thought of a reversion to his former stasis was anathema to him” (Barrett, 2015, p. 46). His exploitation of white privileges unravels his recently established ideologies and constructions that are similar to those which were instilled through the process of colonization. Like colonizers and white supremacists, he shows favoritism toward the white-skinned people over the blacks. For example, as Frank Whyte gets to a mall, he observes for the first time another white female ever since his transmogrification. Due to being the “lone white face in a sea of black … invisible to comprehension” (p. 13), he tries to catch her attention so as to let her interact with him, yet she takes no notice of him (p. 50).

The novel, per se, poses the question whether the present is detached from the past through the examination of Furo and his compeers. It is the Nigerians themselves who promote and strengthen whiteness with the intention to realize social development. Even though Frank is a regular individual—having a childish attitude—the rest of the characters fail to reveal his counterfeit, or rather, they leverage his white skin. They are

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race traitors themselves for maintaining racial notions instead of rejecting them or work to abolish them at least.

These acts of race treason resemble how Frantz Fanon describes black people’s psychology in Black Skin, White Masks (1952)—claiming that North Africans and Afro- Carribeans considered that social advancement can be achieved through their propinquity to white people, while denying their standards and customs. This is identical to Frank’s actions. “For the black man there is only one destiny. And it is white” The author cites this quotation which belongs to Fanon (Barrett, 2015, p. 171). The author could have used this quote to refer to Furo’s condition, being fit for Fanon’s vision (Fanon, 2008, p. 9) which is, a black man “becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness”. It instantaneously serves as an action of configuration and denial (Fanon, 2008, p. 83).

Furo’s former skin started to instigate racial terrorization to him. Even when he decides to change his name, he chooses a European name “Frank Whyte” rather than having a different Nigerian name. Another action he makes in order to become officially and legally white takes place as he applies for a new passport with his new appellation and appearance such that they become stored on the database of the government. He is aware of the fact that his whiteness is not solely dermal. Within the framework of evading being subject to deception, he adopts ideologies and behaviors related to whiteness and its superiority. At first, his implementation is restricted to managing his position and look (Barrett, 2015, p. 11). However, when he develops to be disaffected— distanced from his old state—his behavior begins to involve exploitation, criticizing, and demeaning other Nigerians. Due to their misbelief of what whiteness is, they all consider what he is doing is exercising whiteness.

Frank believes that his descent as well threatens to uncover his secret; therefore, as his family members’ endeavor in searching for him through social media and on the ground, he blocks every means of communication with them in spite of their caring. In fact, when Frank ascends the economic and social ranking, he decides to do so solitarily, oblivious to the sense of responsibility to support his family financially although the mother “counted him as her second chance to succeed in everything his father had failed at” (Barrett, 2015, p. 40). Additionally, despite having a white skin, he is afraid that his

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ethnic decent would jeopardize him through his own offspring, and for this reason, he strives to persuade his girlfriend—Syreeta—to have an abortion as he gets her pregnant. Due to his growing apprehension over becoming endangered by blackness again, he exposes himself to infertility.

‘[T]he bigger terror was that the blackness of his buttocks would spread into sight, would creep outwards to engulf everything, to show him up as an imposter . . . He knew that so long as the vestiges of his old self remained with him, his new self would never be safe from ridicule and incomprehension’ (Barrett, 2015, p. 111). Rather than considering his white pigment as an imperfection, he, instead, regards his black skin hue as the real defect that he must get rid of. The black skin of his buttocks, to him, is the sign of his “old self [that] remained with him” and—when alone with Syreeta—it becomes a source of ridicule. To him, it is “a blemish,” (Barrett, 2015, p. 111), and a “problem to be solved” (Barrett, 2015, p. 119).

Frank becomes very selfish and leaves Syreeta for being pregnant, afraid that the baby may come out with a black skin hue and ruins what he has built. He considers the pregnancy as a potential problem that would reveal his secret (Barrett, 2015, pp. 251– 255). Therefore, all in all, Furo betrays his family in the first place, and then he does so to the one who has made him rich—Arinze—and then, in the end, he betrays the one who has afforded him shelter and everything that he has needed, Syreeta. The others who have favored him over the other black people in terms of treatment, post occupation, marriage, etc. have also betrayed their own race.

The foregoing analysis has illustrated how Furo/Frank’s behavior indicates that whiteness is favored in a community comprised by blacks. It is also found that black people themselves have a role to play in instigating sentiments of superiority already possessed by white-skinned people through the former’s belief in the superiority of the latter, thus hailing them over blacks while generating their own inferiority feelings. Accordingly, Furo/Frank welcomes the transmogrification of his skin from black to white as both parties—Frank/Furo and other blacks—betray their race.

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CONCLUSION

One of the international social issues that remained controversial to address over history is racism. Despite the effective solutions that were found to counter the facets of racial bigotry—including the Slave Trade as a start, Jim Crowism in the US, Apartheid in South Africa, etc.—racial discrimination still penetrates itself indirectly in societies worldwide in the 21st-century. The current study supplies the reader with critical analyses based on Noel’s concept of “Race Treason” and Adler’s psychological approach of “Individual Psychology”. The thesis has investigated the two theories by examining the characters of the three literary works in the previous chapters, displaying how skin color is strongly associated with the Adlerian concepts of “Superiority” and “Inferiority Feelings”. In addition, it has disclosed how race treason has taken place figuratively by blacks and whites, impacting the long-lasting existence of the white skin privileges in one way or another.

In terms of “Race Treason” in Black Like Me, Griffin betrays his white race by documenting the differences between the white race and the black race. He does so by drawing comparisons between the whites and the blacks and how each of the two is affected either positively or negatively by the “White Privilege” which he seeks to abolish. Because he has unearned white privileges, Griffin manages to work it out, having his white colleagues funding his project. The analysis follows the difference between the journalist’s life before and after his nonautomatic skin transformation from white to black, discovering how his social image has changed synchronously. Once he becomes black, he could not find occupation, good treatment, nor a place to sleep unless he sleeps at black individuals’ houses. He reaches a conclusion from what he experiences that as a white man, he does not find hardships because of his skin color; quite the reverse, it helps him live his life peacefully, without verbal or physical violence; as a black man, everything becomes overturned. Therefore, the actions of race treason made by John can be seen by his endeavors to unravel the bitter truth of his white peers against the black people. He exposes their racism, extreme views, violent approaches, etc. Because he helps the blacks with their cause, he has become a race traitor. He prefers supporting humanity. He spends time, money, and energy in order to partake in ending

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racism versus the blacks despite being subject to threats—one among many other negative consequences.

Psychologically, throughout Black Like Me, John Griffin feels he has inferiorities to be compensated. Typically, these inferiorities are related to his line of work at first, and then, as a human being, triggered altogether by the unanswered question of why the rate of the Black Americans who are committing suicide is higher than others. Through his journey, his psyche has been damaged due to the mistreatment, the threats, and the inequality that he has witnessed. It is found that upon compensating his previous work- related inferiorities, new ones emerged such as the sense of insecurity upon revealing his secret experimentation to the public. The newly found inferiorities related to security are not compensated until he and his family travel for Mexico. He does feel superior but not in an arrogant sense; that is, he believes that he is more knowledgeable and truly considerate than his white-skinned peers, for when comparing Griffin to the one group of whites that detests racism yet does nothing about it, he is the one who takes the initiative; when comparing him to the other group that represents the racists themselves, he is capable of coming up with an innovative scheme whereby the racists realize their own racism. That said, he does not feel superior to black people, yet helpful and empathetic toward their cause, having a feeling of social interest.

In Levy’s work, “Race Treason” in Small Island occurs mainly with three figures. The first is Michael, who has forgone all his past, family members, and country in favor of self-interests. He has ignored the love of a black woman relative— Hortense—and focuses on loving two white ladies at different points of time. When in Britain, he tells Queenie that he has nothing back in Jamaica, claiming his family is dead, and planning to go to Canada. He makes a relationship with her and has a child from her. The second character is Queenie Buxton. She opens her house for the black soldiers, and afterward, black immigrants. She does not comply with the prevailing racist views of the English society. Color, to her, is of no importance, and for that reason, she does not wait for white tenants. Queenie fights racism by using the white privileges she has, aiding, among others, a pair of Jamaican spouses—Gilbert and Hortense. Queenie, being white, is capable of helping the blacks—soldiers and immigrants alike—because her whiteness permits her to stand against her neighbors who do not agree with her decision

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of renting her rooms to the blacks, so she helps the blacks suffer less in a prejudicial society. The third figure is Hortense. She betrays her race when she always brags about her slightly light skin tone, criticizing her own race members—including her family— on one hand and praising the white British on the other.

In respect of psychology, it is found in Small Island that Hortense, even though she is black, feels superior to her black-skinned counterparts. This results in due to two things—first, her slightly brighter skin hue, which makes her consider herself not black like them; second, her occupation of being a teacher in a foreign boarding school. Therefore, when in Britain, she feels that her former occupation and her slightly light skin will make the British consider her equal to them. She follows certain ways in order to look British—mainly through her dressing and speaking style. She dresses frocks on daily occasions with gloves and imitates the accent of the English. Hortense realizes her inferiorities as the novel approaches its end and accepts to comply with the rules of the UK. Her husband, Gilbert, has several inferiorities in work. He knows that he is inferior to the British citizens shortly after he experiences the bitter life in the UK. Therefore, he manages to compensate his inferiorities with what is offered. Consequently, both, Gilbert and Hortense experience how life forces them to feel inferior regardless of what they do. Their proprietor, Queenie also has inferiorities to be compensated. They have been compensated for with the help of her black tenants. For instance, Gilbert has offered her tenderness which replaces her mother’s dislike. Michael has offered her love and offspring which replaces her husband’s cold feelings, infertility, and absence. Therefore, she does not show any superior signs over them.

Concerning Blackass, Furo does everything in order to attain the white race existence in his Nigerian community represented by himself although before the transmogrification, he suffers due to his black skin. The same objective urges him to betray his race and seize the day, trying to make something for himself without paying attention to others, just like how nobody has paid attention to him and his miseries before then when he was black. Thus, when he becomes white, instead of treating the black people around him in a way that he has desired others to treat him when being black, he treats them in an arrogant way, showing dominance. The other black characters—the CEOs, the women, and the rest—involve themselves in betraying their own race by

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providing plenty of opportunities to Frank, thereby they help the protagonist to betray his black race.

With regard to Adlerian psychology, the main character in Blackass, Furo/Frank, used to suffer greatly from his inferiorities originated from his black skin before transforming—he had no job, no marriage, no house, no independence, etc. After waking up becoming white, he starts experiencing superiority feelings, gradually feeling better than others, influenced by the others themselves. Thus, those around Furo build in him that sense of superiority due to his skin tone. CEOs in the novel struggle with one another to hire Frank in their companies so as to exploit his skin for economic purposes. Therefore, he starts embracing that feeling reaching a superiority complex, and starts rebuking others, ignoring his family, and disliking the things offered to him. Once he is covered with white skin, he gets to find work, friends, people who offer help, etc. in restaurants, malls, companies, gardens, and every other place limned in the novel. He finds people willing to help him to the detriment of others’ interests. Thus, due to this favoritism, Frank gains success even though he is neither well-educated, nor knowledgeable.

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APPENDIX

Image 1. A documentation of a severely Image 2. A Screenshot that illustrates whipped runaway slave’s back during how the blacks are still being victimized, the mid of the 19th-century (Oliver & yet with bullets rather than whips in the McPherson, 1863). 21st-century (Black Man in America, 1:44).

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Image 3. Griffin Under the Sunlamp: Ultraviolet radiation accelerated the darkening process, initiated by Oxsoralen, the drug used to treat vitiligo (Griffin, 2006, p. 140).

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CURRICULUM VITAE

HUSAMULDDIN SABAH AZEEZ ALFAISALI is an Iraqi writer, rapper, photographer, and music producer. In 2014, he attended Al-Ma’mon University College, where he graduated at the top of his class, having his first degree in English Language & Literature. During that four-year period, he received awards and certificates from the Sunni Endowment Office in 2015, Iraqi Translators’ Association in 2016, and the president of Al-Ma’mon University College in 2017. In 2019, he matriculated at Karabuk University in Turkey to complete his postgraduate studies in English Literature. He composed several literary works. In 2017, he wrote his first collection of poetry book in Arabic, “A Lover’s Dreams”. Then, in the following year, he penned a short story entitled “The Twin” in two versions (Arabic & English), ensued by a novella “Eventide” in 2019 written in English as well. All of which are self-published on Amazon.

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