It's oversimplifying White Teeth to
It's oversimplifying White Teeth to say that it makes racism seem out of date, precisely because the book includes characters like Joyce and Marcus Chalfen. Smith does make the point that the boundaries between white, black, Asian, etc., are getting harder to trace and, perhaps, act upon. But she's more silent on what the ramifications of that blurring between races and cultures means for the people in them. History has left many of the minorities in the book out of touch with their roots and put out about it, but their efforts to overcome it seem more comic and touchingly futile than earnest and effective. It's interesting, though, that the halal butcher joins KEVIN because of the racism he suffers, and yet Smith's lightly mocking treatment of the fundamentalist group makes it clear that she doesn't see it as any kind of solution.
I thought Joyce Chalfen, incidentally, was one of the funniest and best-written characters in the book. She really brings out Smith's skill as a satirist because she's so much more a caricature than anyone else, yet at the same time her motivating impulses such as lust for Millat and pride in her family are some of the most human emotions in the book, too. I hope Smith uses more of her skills as a satirist in her future books. Her interest in gardening was totally apt, because it represents her patronizing ideas about "diversity." Diversity is great, let's have more "brown" people in the house, etc., etc., but keep it under control for goodness sake.
After I read hcog's last post, I started wondering if the thrust of the book actually works against Smith in a way. In the end (and if you've gotten to the end you know what I mean), all of the efforts to control and engineer the purity of life fail, and relativism wins. But isn't it almost a contradiction to come out with that kind of message--to say, basically, that change is the only constant? And by saying that, doesn't an artist, who essentially wants to posit some kind of "truth," necessarily undermine him- or herself?
hcog, you raise another interesting question--who are the victims in White Teeth? Who comes out looking worse than they did when they went in? Maybe the victims are the misunderstood, such as Salman Rushdie, the unnamed author that Millat is so gung-ho about protesting even though he's not sure why he should be. Perhaps there are no real victims, since the book is a comedy at heart, which precludes shutting anyone out in the end. Everyone is flawed in one way or another, which might be victimhood enough.