2016 Booker prize-winner Paul Beatty says US President Donald Trump’s rise is not a shock, writes Vidhi Doshi for The Observer.
THE SELLOUT
Paul Beatty
Bloomsbury/Allen & Unwin
When Donald Trump was being inaugurated, Paul Beatty was lying in bed with his wife, groggy with medication halfway around the world, in Jaipur, India. His book, The Sellout, a sarcastic, complex novel on race relations in the United States, was the first American work to win the Man Booker Prize, but Beatty, refuses to play along and be the voice of black America journalists so desperately want him to be.
"I don’t claim to offer any special insight," he says.
"I read the same newspapers you all do."
His pessimism about America’s future seems to reflect the gloom of many Americans who watched the former reality-TV star take the oath.
"It’s like a big test, and it’s like, is the world going to fail? [Trump’s victory] is so symptomatic of so much that’s happening [in the world]. In the States everybody pays attention, because supposedly the States is different. But this xenophobia, this fear, this insecurity, with [Indian prime minister Narendra] Modi here, [Rodrigo] Duterte in the Philippines, they’ve always been there, but the fact that they’re making progress, that’s scary."
Trump’s rise is difficult to comprehend, Beatty says.
"It’s like a diorama on how we do things against our own self- interest," he says.
"Despite his misogyny, his rhetoric, 48% of women voted for Trump, 8% of African-Americans."
He muses that many who support Trump do so just to provoke reactions. To Beatty, Trump stood out as particularly undignified against the dignified ritual of the inauguration.
"It’s funny because you have this decorum, and this guy is anything but gracious, anything but. At least Barack Obama has a level of civility that Trump doesn’t."
But watching him take the oath, Beatty felt none of the shock or horror that many liberal Americans have since election results were announced. Trump’s America, he says, is one that has existed for a long time, and one Beatty knows well.
"This is nothing new. To me that’s the part that feels disingenuous. When people go, I don’t recognise this place. And I’m like, where have you been? That’s the part that bothers me. With the police violence; people are like, oh I didn’t know. And it’s like people have been putting this in your face for ages and all of a sudden now . . . why now?"
After Trump’s victory was announced, a class of students that he teaches at Columbia University in New York greeted him in tears.
"They were distraught. They were inconsolable. They are in their early 20s, so they’ve grown up with whatever Obama does symbolise, they’ve grown up with that for a big part of their lives. They’ve come of age with it, and all of a sudden that’s gone."
For many, Obama’s presidency marked an era of change in America. But Beatty always doubted the rosy image of improving race relations under the nation’s first black president that was presented at the time. Some of his students, he says, were horrified and hurt when their own parents started spouting pro-Trump rhetoric.
"What’s to be hurt by? Why are you hurt? Is this new for you? How is this new?"
The existence of white supremacy, xenophobia and violence is something he and many of his generation of non-white Americans have grown up with. Beatty describes always feeling an outsider in his own country.
"Maybe I just don’t feel accepted, so I don’t feel hurt. I’m not a patriot. It’s just my home, where I grew up, but hurt, no."
Beatty doesn’t want to make predictions about the future (at least, not in public), but he fears Trump’s presidency will make life more difficult for black Americans.
"I think things can get worse. I have zero faith in this guy. Zero faith in the people that stand behind him."
"The thing I’ve been thinking about," he says, "is this continuing lack of accountability and the nation’s continuing acceptance of that."
The only optimism, he feels, comes from the thousands of protesters and campaigners who take to the streets to oppose Trump’s rhetoric.
"Whether their frustrations get heard is another story, but they’re out there screaming and shouting."
— Guardian News and Media
