The Struggle for Dickens in a Post-Racial World

In Paul Beatty's The Sellout, the struggle that engages the narrator for much of the novel is his fight to reinstate Dickens as a city. It was removed quietly and "didn't go out with a bang like Nagasaki, Sodom and Gomorrah, and my dad" (57). It was taken down in order to keep property values up and blood pressures down of surrounding cities. There were no official announcements---it just happened without warning (58). Throughout the novel, Beatty clearly portrays Dickens as a poor place with its citizens being held back. This is evidenced by the career fair that takes place at Chaff, when every single occupation that was exhibited was low-level, almost like those were the only options. Principal Molina knew that "the black and brown troops she was sending out into the world didn't have much of a chance" (165).  By erasing this town, the government is trying to ignore the problems like poverty that are so prevalent in Dickens. This has parallels to how some neighborhoods like the South Side of Chicago are completely ignored. People do not care about what goes on in these neighborhoods and pretend like they do not even exist. The narrator is fighting against this and wants the world to acknowledge Dickens for what it is. He does not want these problems to be brushed aside and fights to reinstate the city. For all its problems, Dickens is still a part of him and without it, he does not know how to become himself (40). The narrator thinks that "real cities have borders. And signs. And sister cities" (141). With this in mind, he sets out a plan to reanimate Dickens by actually painting city borders around the city. What ensues afterwards is the entire community rallying behind him, helping him paint the borders. It makes them ask themselves "why they felt so strongly about the Dickens side of the line as opposed to the other side. When there was just as much uncurbed dog shit over there as here" (109). The narrator also sends in applications for sister cities to pair with Dickens. To his despair, only Juarez, Chernobyl, and Kinshasa are listed as compatible, with all of them rejecting Dickens for ironic reasons. For example, Chernobyl rejects Dickens due to its proximity to sewage treatment plants" (147). Beatty uses humor here to reveal just how absurdly unwanted Dickens is that even the "worst" cities in the world do not even want to associate with it. Later on, the narrator restores segregation back to the schools, because he feels that would be key to bringing Dickens back (167). Eventually, he succeeds and Dickens is reinstated as a city. I believe Beatty through the fight for Dickens, is trying to communicate the idea that we should not trick ourselves into thinking that we've solved the problem of racism. That just because slavery or Jim Crow does not exist anymore, we can ignore the inequality that takes place in places like Dickens. Beatty, just like the narrator, wants the world to acknowledge Dickens or real-life equivalents and does this by "whispering racism in a post-racial world" (262).