The Sellout

The Sellout is part of a long literary tradition of Black people writing toward their concept of their own race, and at the time of its publication, many writers were working through the idea that their Blackness is the definitive feature of their identity as they move through the world. In 2014, the contemporary poet Claudia Rankine published the award-winning, best-selling collection of prose poems/essays Citizen. In that work, Rankine sees race as a permanent part of her identity and interactions. For example, when a child sits next to her on the airplane and makes an awkward comment to her mom, it’s due to Rankine’s race; when a real estate agent talks to her white friend instead of her, it’s due to race.

Similarly, the American author Robin DiAngelo also sees race and racism as an inextricable, ever-present part of American society. In White Fragility (2018), she makes the case that all white people, whether they know it or not, are racist to a degree. Thereby, all Black people, whether they know it or not, are victims of racism. In How to Be an Antiracist (2019), the professor, activist, and author Ibram X. Kendi proposes a similar binary vision of race and racism: People are either racist or antiracist—there is no middle ground.

The 2010s produced a long list of influential books on race and racism, many of them growing out of the work of the BLM movement, challenging the systemic and institutionalized racism that led to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Trayvon Martin, and so many others. Some of the most popular of these books (including DiAngelo and Kendi’s) have been received as instructional, suggesting that there is a single “correct” way to interact with the mythology of race in America and that, by reading these books, one can learn it (though the books themselves approach their subject with nuance).

Me counters such concrete discourse. Through him, Beatty seeks to acknowledge the slipperiness that has always been a fundamental part of the language of race and of resistance to racism. His concept of “quintessential [B]lackness” (which he ironically refers to as “unmitigated [B]lackness” can be defined only by example, and his examples include not only Black cultural icons like Charlie Parker, Richard Pryor, and the Wu-Tang Clan, but also the Mexican surrealist painter Frida Kahlo, the French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard, and the Icelandic singer-songwriter Björk, suggesting that Blackness involves qualities of excellence and outsider status rather than strictly being a racial construct. He plays around with race and personal identity, portraying it as malleable and a source of outrageous comedy. Race isn’t binary but messy, and to resist the soul-deadening force of anti-Black racism, one has to be at home in that messiness.

In an interview with Guernica, Beatty replies to BLM and the contemporary discourse on race, “I don’t have any real views on any of this. I think there’s nothing new going on” (Wolfe, Chris Paul. “Paul Beatty: I See You.” Guernica, 2016). Though BLM has made more people aware of the deadly injustice facing Black people, Beatty’s work seeks to remind readers that the discourse around race goes back centuries. In a collection of essays first published in the 1950s, Notes of a Native Son, the author James Baldwin writes:

One of the problems about being a Negro writer is that the Negro problem is written about so widely. The bookshelves groan under the weight of information, and everyone, therefore, considers himself informed (Baldwin, James. Notes of a Native Son. Beacon Press, 1970).

Me parodies the ample number of texts about race through Foy Cheshire and the books published by people affiliated with the Dum Dum Donut Intellectuals.

At the zoo, Me runs into a gorilla named Baraka—a reference to the controversial author Amiri Baraka. In the 1960s, Baraka advanced the idea of “official Negroes” or “puppets and messengers” of the ruling class (Baraka, Amiri. Home: Social Essays. Akashic Books, 2009). The contemporary philosopher and speaker Cornell West puts his spin on “official Negroes” with the term “Black faces in high places” (Queally, Jon. “Cornell West Says ‘Neo-Fascist Gangster’ Trump Exposes America As A ‘Failed Social Experiment’.” Salon, 2020). With fictional figures like Foy Cheshire, and real-life figures like Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, and Barack Obama, Beatty continues the idea of “official Negroes” and “Black faces in high places.”

In 1928, the author Zora Neale Hurston published an essay, “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” Like Me, Hurston isn’t constrained by her race. She states, “I am not tragically colored” (Hurston, Zora Neale. “How It Feels to Be Colored Me.” Project Gutenberg, 2024). She, too, has a playful and flexible concept of race. Hurston notes, “At certain times, I have no race. I am me” (Hurston). In The Sellout, the narrator is Me—perhaps this choice is an allusion to Hurston’s essay.