Whiteness and White Supremacy

Throughout the novel, Hamid explores whiteness and white supremacy through characters who are initially white but who become dark-skinned through a mysterious transformation. Most explicitly, the author addresses these ideas in his depiction of Oona's mother, who follows websites and social media accounts espousing white supremacist beliefs. The dogma espoused on these websites tells Oona's mother about “the plot against their kind...the only people who could not call themselves a people in this country” (49). The author often uses vague language when representing white supremacist ideology, both so as not to promulgate it, and to keep the atmosphere of the novel more like a parable, where details are eschewed in favor of advancing a moral lesson. The author humanizes Oona's mother by providing context about her life that demonstrates how she came to believe in white supremacist ideology. The narrator explains that she...