Race and Racism

Through Gilbert and Hortense’s status as outsiders, Levy defamiliarizes the topic of racism in order to emphasize its inherent absurdity. As Jamaicans, Gilbert and Hortense grow up away from the segregation and overt, systemic racism that exists in both England and the United States. Gilbert, during his time at a military camp in Virginia, is struck by the dangerous and illogical race relations in the U.S. As he learns about segregation, he comments that “even the most feeble-minded small islanders could detect something odd about the situation… ‘Only [solution] that works in this country, and certainly in the military, is segregation.’ This was apparently how everyone liked it—black man as well as white. They had a name for it—no, not master-race theory: Jim Crow!” (110). As an outsider to the segregation present in the United States, Gilbert can observe—in a...