Harlem Shuffle

Despite his insistence that he is a respectable furniture salesman who only happens to sell a few stolen goods, Ray cannot stay away from violence. His involvement in the heist is limited but the aftermath means that he finds himself forced to perform duties that he never envisioned possible. As much as Ray does not want to be considered his father’s son, the comparison is inescapable when dealing with men like Pepper. After he shoots Miami Joe, Pepper tells Ray that he should know where to dump the body because he is Mike Carney’s son. Ray bristles at the suggestion, but Pepper is right. Ray does know where to dump the body and he even uses his father’s truck to do so. Ray may want to avoid becoming his father, but there are certain actions and behaviors that he cannot escape. Mike Carney left an indelible impression on his son and Ray carries this influence with him, as much as he tries to hide it from the rest of the world. It is also extraordinarily telling that Ray was only able to open his furniture store because of the $30,000 Mike left hidden in his car after his death. Barred from the kind of institutional and generational wealth that many white families easily pass to their children through property and financial instruments, Ray is forced to rely on his father’s ill-gotten gains to achieve legitimacy.

These chapters also introduce the reader to Strivers’ Row, the up-and-coming Harlem neighborhood where Leland and Alma live. Known today as the St. Nicholas Historic District, Strivers’ Row was originally designed in the late 19th century by David H. King, Jr. to house Manhattan’s moneyed white elite. However, after the financial panic of 1893, the houses largely sat empty until 1919, when the neighborhood’s financiers finally made the homes available to African Americans. They tended to attract upwardly-mobile Black professionals, hence the nickname Strivers’ Row. Yet while the neighborhood thrived during the 1920s, by the time of Harlem Shuffle’s setting, many of its Black middle-class residents had abandoned it. Like many neighborhoods, Harlem experienced enormous losses during the Great Depression. Yet because it was predominantly Black, Harlem was shut out from the benefits of both municipal public works projects under New York city planner Robert Moses and many federal New Deal initiatives. (Caro, Robert. The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. New York: Knopf. 1974.) Whitehead’s crime novel intersects with these more serious issues related to race and housing in numerous ways. For example, some of the Strivers’ Row residents are descendants of African Americans who lived in Seneca Village, a predominantly Black Manhattan neighborhood razed in the 1850s to make room for Central Park.

Ray’s conflict with his mother-in-law illustrates that both parts of his life have their complexities. To Alma and Leland, Ray is the obvious second choice to marry their daughter. They believe that Elizabeth married a man below her social station and they are not shy about their resentment of Ray. To them, he is too dark-skinned, too poor, and too much associated with the criminal elements of Harlem to be considered a good match. Like Pepper, they cannot help but associate Ray with his father even though Ray goes to great lengths to demonstrate that he is a respectable figure. To that extent, his in-laws are not even aware of his criminal activity. The mere suggestion that Ray is associated with less than respectable people is enough for them to tarnish Ray with the same brush. Again, Ray is forced to rely on his self-delusion. He resents Alma’s implication that he is criminal-minded in any way, yet his actions suggest that she is not entirely wrong. Ray wants everyone to believe in his mythological self, the idea of Ray as the upstanding citizen and respected businessman. Every challenge to this—whether true or not—is a challenge to his self-perception and he reacts in an angry fashion. There is also an irony in Ray’s efforts to delude himself and others about his criminality—after all, Leland is a crook himself, helping rich people cheat on their taxes.

Added to Ray’s self-delusion is the question of his motivations. His furniture store is successful and he could manage to get by without involving himself in criminal activity. To some extent, however, Ray actively chooses to be involved. Sometimes he involves himself to help Freddie and sometimes he is threatened by men like Pepper, but most of Ray’s crimes are carried out of his own volition. In the back of Ray’s mind, he enjoys the validation more than the money that he gets from selling stolen goods. He can show that he is just as smart as his father while also managing to maintain a successful business at the same time. Mike Carney casts a long shadow and—as much as Ray does not want to be seen to be anything like Mike—a small part of him wants to measure himself against his father’s achievements and succeed where Mike could not. Ray continues to commit crimes not only because he wants the money, but because the thrill of getting away with it soothes his ego.