"What're a few n . . . jokes among friends? We Kaufmans have always been the type of n . . .rs who can take a joke. I used to visit my father, the sketch artist at the Wilshire LAPD precinct. His fellow officers would stand around cluttered desks breaking themselves up by telling how-many-n . . .s-does-it-take jokes, pounding each other on the back and looking over their broad shoulders to see if me and Daddy were laughing. Dad always was. the epaulets on his shoulders raising up like inchworms as he giggled. I never laughted until my father slapped me hard between the shoulder blades. The heavy-handed blow bringing my weight to my tiptoes, raising my chin from my chest, and I'd burp out a couple of titters of self-defilement."

• Labeling Theory and Ethnomethodology, Online.
  Good source of theory for understanding the passage from White Boy Shuffle

Click on any of the letter responses for jeanne's lecture notes on that response.

1. Which of the following comments on the above passage from White Boy Shuffle do you consider most appropriate?

1. Beatty's detailed description of the physical effects of the blow his father delivered to nudge him into deference behavior makes the self-defilement he felt in such behavior come to life.

2. Beatty's father laughs at the how-many-does-it-take jokes because if he had not laughed, or if he had objected, it would have resulted in an uncomfortable work situation.

3. The fact that the fellow officers looked to see if Beatty and his father were laughing seems to indicate that they were accepted in the group, and that if they had not laughed, the jokes might have stopped. However, since the officers were taking part in dominant discourse, there was no acceptable discourse in which Beatty and his father could reach or express their feelings.

4. All of the above.

5. Some of the above.

---

---