Horsefly Shuffle

As several people have mentioned in class, Sag Harbor is very similar to a book we read in AA lit last semester called The White Boy Shuffle.
Both books are written by young African American males who are torn between different cultures in race related ways. They both have similar, sarcastic, contemporary-seeming narrations and they were both written about the 80s from a later perspective (TWBS was published in '96 and Sag in '09).

I noticed these parallels almost immediately, but the similarities really got to me when Benji mentioned that the "horsefly shuffle" (a fly swatting technique for summertime hikes through the brush) is the only dance he can do, because The White Boy Shuffle is named for the only dance that Gunnar, the main character in TWBS, can do. Perhaps this is total coincidence. Maybe the __ shuffle was just a common expression in the 80's and self confident, coordinated main characters aren't any fun, but to me it seemed pretty bizarre that this would appear in both novels. I think, in WBS, the dance represents Gunnar's awkward position in between the white world and the black world, as a kid who spent his early childhood in a mostly white area as the cool black kid and then seemed like a nerd when he moved to Hillside. Likewise, in Sag Harbor, it seems that Benji is simultaneously unusual at his (primarily white) prep school, and somewhat separated from the "street culture" that he's trying to imitate (his little blurbs about it make it seem very alien; he's thinking really hard about those ___ lookin' ___ expressions and things), and the fact that he can't dance might play into that like is does for Gunnar. The significance of the dance is more obvious in White Boy Shuffle, but I think that maybe a similar interpretation can be applied to Sag.
I think that a big theme in what we've read so far of Sag Harbor is that Benji (and all of Sag Harbor) is in this awkward place with respect to black history and traditional black problems and things. He and his friends kind of want to embrace classic black culture (like Nick) but aren't quite authentically inclined to follow it. It's not natural for them; they have to work at it. Likewise, Benji really ought to know about all these famous black people like W. E. B. Du Bois, but he doesn't because in his everyday life he is benefitting from their achievements and therefore not constantly forced to think about the issues which they fought against/ not exposed to them sufficiently because he's always around white people. And, he still has to deal with the world's (specifically white peoples') perceptions of his blackness. Like, he has to actively avoid stereotypes and stuff.
Benji's black, but also, in some senses, kind of not (for some very restrictive cultural definitions of 'lack'), just like Gunnar at the start of TWBS. Both books bring up the very complicated issues brought about by the slow and uneven meshing of cultures in modern America.