Race, Injustice, and Action Theme Analysis

At the beginning of Deadly, Unna?, Phillip Gwynne’s novel about interracial friendship in southern Australia, white fourteen-year-old Gary “Blacky” Black is already aware of the racial divide in his community. He only sees the harmful nature of that divide, however, once he becomes friends with Dumby Red, an Aboriginal, or “Nunga,” player on his football team. As Blacky begins to recognize the discrimination around him, he wavers between standing up to such prejudice and passively allowing racism to go unchecked. But when Dumby dies while trying to rob a racist business owner, Blacky eventually decides he must work against the racism in his community. Through Blacky’s development, the novel argues for the power of interracial friendship to foster invaluable understanding of discrimination and segregation. With recognition and empathy, Gwynne suggests, people will feel compelled to take direct action against racism in their communities.

When the novel begins, Blacky can identify the ways in which his town is segregated by race but he doesn’t yet see how this segregation is harmful, nor does he fully comprehend the extent of the discrimination the Nungas face. Blacky notes that the part of town known as the Point, where the Nungas live, and the part called the Port, where the Goonyas (white people) live, are geographically close to each other, but people the two areas don’t intermingle. He also notices that in his football team’s locker room, Nungas congregate on one end and Goonyas on another. Blacky relays all this information to the reader in a matter-of-fact tone, stating that it “was just the way it was.” This underscores how one can become so accustomed to racial prejudice that they see segregation as a harmless norm. Blacky and his white friend Dazza also readily believe the outlandish stereotypes that the adults of their community promote about Nungas—for example, that the Nungas run wild in the Point, attacking people with spears and boomerangs. Because of this, Blacky and Dazza are too afraid to go to the Point. Their fears reveal the ease with which unquestioned stereotypes can become an integral part of one’s opinion about another community. Early on in the plot, Blacky recognizes that, while his white friend Pickles is a horrible football player, the coach chooses Pickles for the team over much better Nunga players, because Pickles is from the Port. Blacky doesn’t feel outrage at this blatant preferential treatment of Goonya players, because he has not yet realized the full injustice of discrimination against Nungas. Being disconnected from members of another race, the novel suggests, can lead to accepting discrimination against that race.

When Blacky becomes friends with the talented Nunga Dumby Red and Dumby’s sister Clarence, he finally begins to recognize the common racism of the Port’s white community as injustice. Having lived his whole life accepting such discrimination as the norm, however, he struggles and often fails to speak out against it. While hanging out with Clarence on the Port’s jetty, Blacky sees graffiti reading, “BOONGS PISS OFF” (“Boongs” being a slur for Australian native peoples). He feels uncomfortable and guilty because he has never tried to remove the graffiti. However, in the months following this scene, Blacky still does not remove the graffiti. When Mark Arks, the white son of the football team’s coach, wins the best football player award over the clearly more skilled Dumby, Blacky feels outraged and declares to himself that he will quit football in protest. Yet he doesn’t tell his coach or any of his teammates about his plans and eventually wonders if quitting football in protest is worth the personal cost. He convinces himself that maybe Mark deserved the award over Dumby. Blacky is unwilling to act against racial injustice because to do so would mean personal sacrifice, so he instead convinces himself such racism doesn’t exist. While Blacky hangs out at a local pub with his father and Pickles, they all listen while the bartender, Big Mac, makes a racist joke about Nungas. Blacky has laughed at this joke before and even repeated it, but now he doesn’t find it funny because he knows the joke concerns his friends Dumby and Clarence. Even though he realizes this joke is wrong, he doesn’t say anything in the moment. All of these instances make clear that although Blacky is beginning to recognize the harmfulness of his town’s discrimination against Nungas, he doesn’t yet turn his anger into action.

The danger of accepting any prejudice, no matter how small, becomes stark when Dumby and two other Nungas attempt to rob Big Mac at gunpoint. Big Mac shoots and kills Dumby, claiming he acted out of self-defense. Blacky doubts the claims of self-defense because he knows Dumby is a kind friend rather than the violent thug the town makes him out to be, and also because Blacky has seen Big Mac’s racist behavior in the past. After Dumby’s death, Blacky realizes he can no longer passively observe the racism of his community. In his grief for his friend, Blacky imagines “grey” as the only color in the world. To Blacky, grey represents a transitional state, one that exists between the sharp racial divides of his town. Unlike his previous, ultimately fleeting feelings of injustice, he cannot shake his sadness over Dumby’s death. This will lead him to finally act against the racism he witnesses. The most tangible example of this racism is the graffiti reading “BOONGS PISS OFF.” When Blacky brings this graffiti up to his elderly neighbor Darcy, Darcy agrees that someone should do something about it but does not press the issue further. Blacky realizes that this passive attitude, relying on “someone” to solve the issue of racism, only allows racism to thrive. While discrimination in his town goes beyond graffiti, Blacky decides he should still do everything in his power to confront racism wherever he can. Blacky covers up the racist graffiti. He also explains to his younger brother, Greggy, how the word “boongs” is a derogatory term for indigenous Australians that shows the writer of the graffiti is racist.

In Deadly, Unna?, Blacky’s relationship to the racism of his town transitions from acceptance, to passive rejection, to active opposition. His journey, sparked by his friendships with Dumby and Clarence, highlights the power of connection between members of different races, further underscoring segregation as a tool that only serves to preserve prejudice. The novel ultimately suggests that the key to fighting discrimination is both empathy and action. It is not enough to acknowledge the existence of racism—instead, as Blacky comes to learn, one must actively stand against it.