Comment

Feb 20, 2018KMJ_ rated this title 1 out of 5 stars
I’m surprised by the good reviews for this book. It was full of stereotypes and it was not well written. Every African-American male in this book is either in a gang, related to someone in a gang, or seriously considering joining a gang. What sort of horrible stereotype is that? The white characters are also over the top stereotypes. I did not need this book to tell me that people who dress up as Klan members, use racial slurs, or have posters for minstrel shows decorating their houses are racist. I knew that already, and I imagine most people reading this book did too. The author had a real opportunity to show how dangerous and pervasive subtle racism can be, but instead the message was that overtly racist people are racist. That is a painfully simplistic way of looking at racism, and there is nothing revelatory about that. The potential of Justyce’s letters to Martin Luther King Jr. is squandered too. He says he’s going to be like MLK, but then 20 pages later he goes to a Halloween party dressed as a “thug” with a classmate dressed like a Klan member. He clearly wasn’t trying very hard to be like MLK or to understand his legacy.