The Apple Never Left the Tree

From the first chapter of The White Boy Shuffle, it's pretty clear that Gunnar has a really odd family history of subverting the progression of anti-racism and black rights. From his ancestor who escaped from being free into slavery, to his father who helps the blatantly racist LAPD, his family isn't exactly what you would call helpful to the cause.

I know we've talked in class before about whether or not Gunnar is proud of his family's history, since his feelings aren't really clear when he presents his family tree to his third-grade class. The only person that we know he absolutely despises is his father. Whether it's because of how closely they're related or if his father did something terrible, I'm not sure. But I don't want to dwell on that too much. If Gunnar hates how submissive his father is to white people, that means that he'd try to distance himself from his father, which probably means he'd have way more black-power ideas that would really show his ancestors who's boss and lead his black followers to a new, better life, right?

Right?

We don't know what happened just based on the prologue, but it seems like something went wrong, and it seems like its partially due to Gunnar's leadership. Already we're seeing how people tend to worship Gunnar over things like his poetry and basketball skills. He's turning into a leader because of his talents that other people respect. The odd thing is that Gunnar doesn't want the respect; he's just naturally good at basketball. Even in the prologue, he really only identifies himself as a poet; he doesn't mention basketball at all. He's achieved this godlike status among people in an area that he doesn't really care much about, which you can tell doesn't seem like a good situation.

What if what happens later on is how Gunnar falls into the lines of his lineage's history of subversion? He's on the track to being a major leader for his community, and at this point the country. But supposedly from the prologue, that goes horribly wrong at some point. If Gunnar is leading everyone in the wrong direction, is he doing the same thing that his family's been doing for generations? Is this the result of him subverting the movement?

To me at least, it makes a shocking amount of sense. After all, this explains why Beatty even included Gunnar's whole family history to begin with. And it seems like this could be a direction that the book is heading in. The combination of Gunnar's apathy and his following is spelling disaster for later on. Whatever Gunnar ends up doing, I think he's leading people in the wrong direction, and that's how he's going to join the long line of Kaufmans doing the wrong thing.

Of course, that might not actually happen, it's just some of what I'm thinking. I feel kind of dirty explicating part of a book before I've read the whole thing. It's not like I've done anything like that before...