Both Deck And Sandy although they had different visions on how to make change we both know that they were dedicated to the cause. They were dedicated to not being hypocrites but in the process they failed. They failed at their marriage and they couldn't keep their family together due to the very same hing they were fighting against: Racism. Even Birdie in the end could still see how much similar they were to each other. Maybe that's why they couldn't get along. "I smiled slightly to myself, thinking how alike my parents still were." (p.397)
They both were intellectuals. Deck was a little less rateable then Sandy because of he was more of a overly-enthused scholar then she was. Sandy was a bleeding heart, more free, more spontaneous. This can be seen even from how they met. She was unsure of her life, Deck was attending Harvard. And they both feared becoming the antithesis of everything they hated, everything about themselves that they wanted to reject they found in each other. And when that wasn't enough they both sought to be transformed to be somehow reinvented. This is who and what the character of Redbone was symbolic of: reinventing, disappearing, reappearing somehow being transformed. this is seen in hid and Decks first encounter in the book. When Deck says angrily "This ain't no brother. Where did this fool come from, anyway? Can someone tell me that? He showed up a month ago actin' like he been a revolutionary all his life, But no one knows where you came from, Red, do they?" This for shadowed Birdies plight and both her and her mother's constant movement. their transformations along the way. Who knows who the real Redbone was. If her was Fed or revolutionary. Or even if he was passing? This is why he was so interested in Birdie throughout the book. She fascinated him, he saw something in her. Maybe he was like Sandy Lee on the run from himself, something trying to transform himself into something authentic. Deck longed to be made authentic. He longed to e seen as a real Black man. Not just another overly intelligent Negro who doesn't really know how to fight the real cause or racism. Hims somehow having a white wife and mixed children along with being Harvard educated, made him feel he was had to prove his blackness. This is why he liked going to the black diners and speaking slang, why he dated Carmen, why he felt he had to keep attempting a bad Afro. He wanted to gain authenticity. Redbone probably wanted the same thing by being apart of the "revolution." In my opinion is that both Sandy and Deck in the process of trying to be transformed they because what they hated the most. Sandy feared becoming a blue-blood elitist wasp. By the end that exactly who she became. Living in New Hampshire with Jim she some how showed more of that side of herself that her own mother who have wanted her to be. Sandy got by out their by using her white privilege. "She was White, she was clearly educated, and most important, the children seem to e tamed by her very presence." (p.137) then she adapted the same characteristics of "How to spot a WASP list" and she used them to her advantages. Birdie Say's this about her moms changes: " I wonder if something in her blue-blood upbringing spared her shame, made her feel slightly superior to the people around us. Whatever the case some of her nonchalance rubbed off on me when I was with her," (p.172)
Then Deck always talked about how he wanted to not be a non active black man talking about change and writing "same old, same old" theories on race in America. Yet he has become so obsessed with race relations in America and writing his book all about it for several years to the extent that her has Lost Cole, didn't have time to look for Birdie, lost Carmen and lives like a shut-in. "Birdie do you understand what I am telling you? These over educated pompous Negro fools in the academy, have everything, and still want to feel like victims. They're addicted to racism, because once you got money and the approval of the white academy, you need something to remind you that you're not a total sellout." (p.396) This is exactly who Deck has become. And they both felt like they had something to prove with the way they educated and raised their children. But I feel like the irony of both these flawed characters was to remind us as he readers that "we often become what we despise the most" or is it "we are who we are?" or could it be, "You cant run from yourself?" All I know is the hypocrisy of these two characters is a goes hand in hand with the ideal of Identity and how we Identify ourselves. Its all very objective.
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