Race and Its Repercussions: An Intersectional Analysis of Colson Whitehead’s The Nickel Boys

Abstract

This research explores the politics of racism and its consequences in Colson Whitehead’s novel The Nickel Boys. The plot is woven around the actual events that happened in Arthur G Dozier School for Boys where an excavation team disinterred dozens of human bodies who became victims of America’s racial politics. The novel revolves around the theme of racial segregation and violence witnessed and understood through the eyes of a ten-year-old boy named Elwood who is sent to a reformatory school after being wrongly accused of theft. His stay at the Nickel makes him realize how blacks are stuck in an inescapable quagmire of violence and lawlessness. Whitehead digs through the previous decades to show how the idea of racism has evolved but is still deeply entrenched in American society. In this regard, the theory of intersectionality as propagated by Kimberle Crenshaw, Critical Race Theory, and Paulo Freire’s theory of oppression will be used to analyze how racism, be it covert or overt, wreaks havoc in the lives of American blacks.