Benji’s parents are not very prominent characters in Sag Harbor. We only see them for a few chapters because Benji’s parents, a successful doctor and lawyer, work in the city, only coming out to Sag on the weekends. Although they aren’t in the novel for that much, their effect on Benji is immense.
Benji’s father is someone who really stuck out to me in the novel. Aside from being an abusive alcoholic, one thing that I thought was interesting his character was the way in which he thinks about street culture. Even though he was supposedly raised on the streets, Benji’s father does all that he can to distance himself from being street. He looks down upon black people who are of lower class, which we see in several instances throughout the novel, for example when Benji cuts his hair. When Benji’s father sees his new haircut, he tells Benji that he “looks like one of those corner n******”, implying that Benji’s hair isn’t what he deems good.
Yet even though Benji’s father is against street culture, he still has pride in blackness. He tells Benji in preschool to punch a kid if they touch his hair, and schools the teacher “in the finer points of black history” if he gets a call home about Benji’s bad behavior. Benji’s father is evidently very knowledgeable about not submitting to white people, but seems to have no problem putting down fellow black people. How can someone who is prideful in their blackness resent some black people?
We discussed this issue a few times last year during African American Lit. In Invisible Man, we explored the idea that education was harmful to people of color as it causes a sense of superiorness. “The ‘educated negroes’ have an attitude of contempt towards their own people because [...] Negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin, and the Teuton and to despise the African,” (http://aalmaya.blogspot.com/). In this instance, Benji’s father is a very educated black man, and his status and prestige have caused him to look down upon black people who don’t share the same success/ideals as him.
This is a really interesting and accurate point about how it's strange that Benji's father has a lot of pride in being black, but also uses the black street culture as a negative when he is talking about Benji's hair. This probably adds to Benji's confusion in his identity because even his father is sending mixed signals.
ReplyDeleteYou bring up a good point. It's also interesting since Benji's father is glad he doesn't have to cut Benji's hair anymore, yet he slides in that comment, showing disapproval and tolerance at the same time.
ReplyDeleteI think this point intersects nicely with the complex and somewhat failed idea of the American Dream. Benji's father grew up on the streets but worked hard to "make a better life for his kids". But instead of appreciating and helping people from where he originated, he has turned his back on them to fuel the rise of the black bourgeoisie. Incidentally, this was a huge problem in the late 1980s and 1990s. The growing gap between the black upper and lower classes ultimately divided them on a number of core problems. Not to write an essay on it, I will say this: Benji's father is not alone in his isolation from the black lower class, as many former activists during the Northern Civil Rights Movement ended up becoming stereotypically successful.
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