This question is based on Paul Beatty's White Boy Shuffle, a postmodern novel, a Black coming of age novel, by a talented young novelist from Los Angeles. Read the following paragraph from White Boy Shuffle:

"What're a few n . . . jokes among friends? We Kaufmans have always been the type of n . . .rs who can take a joke. I used to visit my father, the sketch artist at the Wilshire LAPD precinct. His fellow officers would stand around cluttered desks breaking themselves up by telling how-many-n . . .s-does-it-take jokes, pounding each other on the back and looking over their broad shoulders to see if me and Daddy were laughing. Dad always was. the epaulets on his shoulders raising up like inchworms as he giggled. I never laughted until my father slapped me hard between the shoulder blades. The heavy-handed blow bringing my weight to my tiptoes, raising my chin from my chest, and I'd burp out a couple of titters of self-defilement."

• Labeling Theory and Ethnomethodology, Online.
  Good source of theory for understanding the passage from White Boy Shuffle

Click on any of the letters for jeanne's lecture notes on that interpretation.

1. How does the idea that dominant discourse affects loving fit into the above paragraph?

Choose "accurate" or "inaccurate" for each of the following interpretations.

1. Dominant discourse, the normative language and culture in which the values and expectations of the dominant group are expressed, constrain both the imaginary and the expression of alternative ideas, creativity, and feelings. The dominant group in the above paragraph is white. Gunnar and his father are constrained to defer to the pejorative jokes of the whites. This adversarial expectation makes it near impossible to approach the situation from a mutuality perspective. (Fellman)

2. The dominant discourse is expressed in pejorative epithets. The white police officers use the "n" word. We have been told since we were small children that one does not need to use offensive language if one commands a large and effective vocabulary. "Perjorative epithets are used by those with inadequate vocabularies," said our parents. Beatty's detailed description of the kind of stories the white officers were telling gives us a great deal more information about the exclusion of Gunnar and his father as Blacks. Beatty's description suggests that the officers were not calling Gunnar and his father pejorative names, but were implying the intellectual inferiority of all Blacks. The very fact that Beatty uses the large and effective vocabulary, while the whites with their derogatory jokes use pejoratives, tends to belie the dominant discourse, for the Black critique is more sophisticated and literate than the childish taunting of the fellow officers.

3. The fact that the fellow officers looked to see if Beatty and his father were laughing seems to indicate that they were accepted in the group, and that if they had not laughed, the jokes might have stopped. However, since the officers were taking part in dominant discourse, there was no acceptable discourse in which Beatty and his father could reach or express their feelings.

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