Race Matters

Race is an issue that few people are comfortable discussing. Teachers want to avoid the controversies that inevitably arise. It's one of those topics, like politics and religion, that my mother always told me are impolite to discuss in public. But if we do not discuss race, how will we ever get past it? Until we are willing to have open and honest dialogue, the ignorance and misunderstanding that is at the root of racial prejudice will continue to divide us.

We still have a long way to go before we can achieve Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s dream of a world in which people are judged "not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." Individuals are still judged by the color of their skin, and if we cannot summon up the courage to confront the issue directly, we can use books to start the dialogue. In the last few years, there have been many novels and nonfiction books published that address historical and modern viewpoints on interracial relationships and racial identity, and this article offers an overview of how those works reflect racial realities and conflicts in American society and beyond.

When Tiger Woods became a prominent public figure several years ago, racial identity became a hot topic of discussion in the media. The multiracial Woods refused to categorize himself or to define himself by some societal label. Some outstanding books that address how young people grapple with, identify with, and ultimately define racial identity have recently come on the scene. Gary Nash's Forbidden Love: The Secret History of Mixed-Race America (Holt, 1999) offers a fascinating historical overview of mixed-race issues in America from Colonial times through the late 20th century. In What Are You? Voices of Mixed-Race Young People (Holt, 1999), Pearl Fuyo Gaskins conducted in-depth interviews with 80 mixed-race teens who spoke candidly about the problems they face with dating and, family life, prejudice from whites and other racial groups, and their struggles to find their own place in the world. In The Color of Our Future (Morrow, 1999), Farai Chideya tackles a similar topic. She interviewed biracial and multiracial teens from a variety of geographic areas across the country. Her approach, however, is more like that of an investigative journalist. She offers more interpretation of and commentary on the teens she interviewed, whereas Gaskins allows the teens to speak for themselves and to share the insights that they have gained from experience.

Racially mixed young people wrestling with identity issues is a prominent theme in many novels with contemporary settings, such as Chris Crutcher's Whale Talk (Greenwillow, 2001), Han Nolan's Born Blue (Harcourt, 2001), and Marilyn Reynolds's If You Loved Me (Morning Glory, 1999). In E. R. Frank's America (Atheneum, 2002), one of the sources of the mixed-race protagonist's severely troubled emotional and psychological state is his identity struggle. Frank's debut novel, Life Is Funny (DK Ink, 2000), dealt with a similar theme.

Jacqueline Woodson addresses both the issues of racial identity and interracial relationships in many of her novels. In The House You Pass on the Way (Delacorte, 1997), she expertly depicts the identity struggle of 14-year-old Staggerlee, the daughter of a racially mixed marriage. Interracial friendship and the conflicts that arise from it are a common theme in this author's work. In If You Come Softly (Putnam, 1998), 15-year-old African-American Jeremiah and Jewish Elisha fall in love, and the couple must cope with the harsh reactions of family and friends. Their romance ends in tragedy when Jeremiah is shot down by police while running through a park in a white neighborhood.

Interracial relationships, whether they are about friendship or romance, always seem to be a source of great conflict, if not outright tragedy. In Mel Glenn's Foreign Exchange: A Mystery in Poems (Morrow, 1999), white Kristen Clarke is murdered, and her African-American boyfriend, Kwame Richards, becomes the prime suspect when the crime stirs up prejudices and stereotypes among the residents of a predominantly white suburban community. The boy is all the more suspicious because he is not only a racial outsider, but also from the inner city, which the people in the "country" irrationally fear.

Bruce Brooks depicts the tensions that arise in an interracial friendship with great skill in his Newbery Honor book The Moves Make the Man (HarperCollins, 1984). Jerome Foxworthy, an African-American basketball player, befriends newcomer Bix Rivers, "the sharpest white athlete" Jerome has ever seen. Sports serves as backdrop for similarly themed stories like David Klass's Danger Zone (Scholastic, 1996) and Chris Lynch's Gold Dust (HarperCollins, 2000). In Danger Zone, talented white basketball player Jimmy Doyle finds himself facing prejudice from the predominantly black "Teen Dream Team" that he joins for an international competition. Set in 1975 Boston, Lynch's Gold Dust tells a story of racial tensions coming to a boil when 12-year-old Richard befriends Napoleon, a Caribbean newcomer to his Catholic school who shares his love for baseball.

HISTORICAL FICTION HAS PROVIDED A PERFECT VEHICLE for bringing our sometimes painful past to life for contemporary readers and showing the human side of economic and political struggles as well as emerging social movements. In Mildred D. Taylor's The Land (Penguin Putnam/Phyllis Fogelman, 2001), Paul-Edward is the son of a white plantation owner and a black slave. His light complexion enables him to pass for white. His identity as a "white nigger," however, traps him between black and white worlds, never able to assimilate himself into either. Katherine Paterson's Jip: His Story (Dutton, 1996), a novel set in mid-1800s Vermont, also depicts a young man trapped between two worlds by his mixed race. A female protagonist wrestles with the same identity problems in Sandra Forrester's Dust from Old Bones (Morrow, 1999). In a series of diary entries, 13-year-old Simone Agneau, of African and European ancestry, describes the peculiar racial caste system that existed in pre-Civil War Louisiana.

The Civil Rights-era South serves as the setting for three novels about interracial friendships and the intense conflicts they cause. In Kristi Collier's Jericho Walls (Holt, 2002), Jo moves to Jericho, AL, in 1957 when her preacher father accepts a post there, and she forms a deep friendship with a black boy that forces her to confront racism and reexamine her values. Diane Les Becquets's The Stones of Mourning Creek (Winslow, 2001), set in 1960s Spring Gap, AL, tells the story of 14-year-old Francie Grove's friendship with Ruthie, a black girl her own age. To Francie's dismay, her neighbors, whom she always thought kind and good-hearted, turn vicious toward her as her friendship with Ruthie grows. In Mildred Barger Herschler's The Darkest Corner (Front Street, 2000), Teddy finds herself at odds with her racist father, a member of the local Ku Klux Klan, when she sides with her friend Stella, an African American, in 1950s Mississippi. A story with a contemporary setting in which the prejudices of parents come between a friendship is Adrian Fogelin's Crossing Jordan (Peachtree, 2000). Twelve-year-old Cass finds that she and her new African-American neighbor Jemmie share an affinity for running, and they develop a close friendship despite the objections of their families.

WAR COMES BETWEEN FRIENDS IN GRAHAM SALISBURYS Under the Blood-Red Sun (Yearling, 1995). When Pearl Harbor is attacked, Japanese-American Tomi watches as his father and grandfather are arrested and wonders if his baseball buddies, the Rats, will still remain his friends. A story with a similar theme, but from a Canadian perspective, is Eric Walters's War of the Eagles (Orca, 1998). Readers learn that, like the United States after the Pearl Harbor attack, Canadian citizens and residents of Japanese heritage were the object of prejudice, and many were interred in detention camps. In Garry Disher's The Divine Wind: A Love Story (Scholastic, 2002), prejudice among family and neighbors surfaces when white Hart Penrose and Japanese Mitsy Sennosuke begin dating in World War II Australia. This novel also depicts the prejudices many white Australians held toward Aborigines and notes that Australia also interred its Japanese citizens in camps during the war.

Two stories in which interracial friendships develop in order to combat racism are Caroline Cooney's Burning Up (Delacorte, 1999) and Lorri Hewett's Lives of Our Own (Dutton, 1998). In Burning Up, 15-year-old Macey decides to research an incident in which a suspicious fire destroyed a barn across from her grandparents' house in her small Connecticut town in 1959, but she finds her teacher opposed to the idea and her family unwilling to discuss it. When she joins a volunteer student group that is helping an African-American inner-city church, an arsonist sets fire to the building. Macey forms a bond with Venita, a member of the church, and they become determined to find the truth about the fire of 1959. In Lives of Our Own , Kari, a classic Southern belle, and Shawna, an African-American girl from Denver, join together in an unlikely coalition to fight racial tensions that erupt in their small Georgia town.

These various books share the message that conflict, whether the inner struggle of a racially mixed individual wrestling with his or her identity or a violent act of prejudice, will always be there as long as we allow race to divide us. The subject may make us uncomfortable but ignoring the issue will not make it go away. Race does matter; it matters very much to many people and for many different reasons. These books can open up opportunities for librarians and teachers to engage readers in discussions about our nation's past and about our contemporary realities. It is only through open and honest dialogue that we can move toward realizing Dr. King's dream.