Prejudice and Discrimination

Throughout the novel, the author uses Ray’s encounters with adversity in order to convey the prejudices and discriminations a Black individual faces in American society. The author begins to introduce these notions in Part 2, “The Joy of Family, 6 Years Ago.” When Ray is a young man in high school, he is initially unaware of the ways in which others perceive him. However, as soon as Ray begins interacting with members of his community in Chapter 6, “The Wedding, October,” he begins to understand that “racism was real, and it was about him” (56, Slocumb’s italics). Ray’s experience playing the wedding gig is formative, in that it is Ray’s first true encounter with racism against his body and identity. “The world had been telling him these things over and over,” Ray realizes, “and he’d just been too dumb to hear it” (57). His...