Identity
Losing his identity after his father dies and the town of Dickens disappears from the map, the narrator feels lost. The narrator's father, like the narrator, does not have a given first name, which is a common stereotype. Often, it is said that an African American father is not to be found, and this is exactly what happens in the novel. The narrator wants to keep his culture, but the only things he can discover about it are bad. The narrator also did not know his mother, therefore has no family to back him up in his quest toward a greater future.
Law and Race
It is so common a stereotype that African Americans break the law that it has unfortunately almost become accepted in our culture. In The Sellout, the narrator is also an African American. He has never done anything wrong until his extreme infraction of owning a slave, and he has to go to the Supreme Court for his actions. In the court, he smokes drugs, which is obviously illegal. However, he claims that the magnitude of his crimes is so large, that no one would care is he did this.
Degradation of Progress
In the 1860's, slaves were freed from forced labor. In the 1960's the Civil Rights Acts were put in place. Everything seemed to be going according to plan, but things, somehow, slipped backwards. Instead of progress, African Americans were being segregated even more. The narrator now owns a slave and wants the community of Dickens to be segregated. How did this happen? The narrator wanted to establish something that he knew in the town, and the only things that he truly knew were the horrible aspects of the past.
