To the Editor:
As I recently prepared dinner for my family, our phone began to blow up with texts and calls. I live in New York City where I work as an author, journalist, and educator. Unbeknownst to me, at a recent school board meeting in Lower Township, someone stood up and accused me of trying to destroy the fabric of America by poisoning the minds of its youth, and of engaging in rewriting history via critical race theory, and that person had at least enough support in the audience that someone penned a letter in the Herald.
I found the letter intently interesting because just a few days prior, after hearing yet again the term “critical race theory” on a news show, I turned to my wife, a retired educator, and asked, “I feel like I know what that means, but can you give me a really solid definition of it?”
Yet, according to at least a few of the people at this school board meeting, if I really wanted the definition of critical race theory, all I had to do was look in the mirror.
For six years, I taught English Language Arts to male high school students awaiting trial on Rikers Island, which, at the time, was the world’s most overcrowded and dangerous jail.
Over that span of time, I met approximately 5,000 students, the overwhelming majority of which were adolescents of color. In fact, it was so uncommon to see a “White kid” on Rikers Island that whenever one arrived, the other students would say to him, “Didn’t the judge get the memo? You’re not supposed to be here.”
The experience of working on Rikers made me want to write a book in which two best friends, one Black and one White, commit a crime together, where the White kid was the one holding the gun that accidentally went off, with the bullet grazing the victim. But, in the end, only the Black kid goes to jail for that crime. That thought became the novel “Black and White,” about Marcus Brown (Black) and Eddie Russo (White).
A previous publisher who read the manuscript told me that I couldn’t write this book because I wasn’t Black. I disagree. In my opinion, the job of the author is to hold a mirror up to society and display to the reader an accurate depiction of what the writer has witnessed (ironically enough, when “Black and White” first came out, the American Library Association (ALA), having never seen a picture of me, put me on a list of famous African American authors.).
To date, “Black and White” has sold approximately a quarter of a million copies, won the International Reading Association’s Children’s Book Award, and received a pair of honors from the ALA.
Make no mistake, there is some stark language in the book, especially from a homeless man who boards a subway train on which Marcus and Eddie are riding. That scene emerged from a real experience.
I was riding the G train from Brooklyn to Queens when that same man stepped onto the train and began to race-bait several passengers. It was reality, another moment in the author’s mirror, and I wanted my characters to experience him, so I moved his exact real-life speech into the book for them to hear.
As for the accusation of sex? Marcus’ secret girlfriend is Eddie’s sister, Rose, and at some point, they kiss. I suppose that may still be enough to tilt some people in this world.
I’ve received countless letters from students around the country, many of whom say that “Black and White” is the first book they’ve read cover-to-cover, and I’m thrilled and honored when a teacher tells me they’re teaching the book alongside Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird.”
I try not to label people, especially those I haven’t met, but I believe it’s fairly obvious to see that the desperate warnings of some people who use the term critical race theory and similar code words to warn the world of a threatening apocalypse have adopted these concepts as what they believe to be a socially acceptable form of racism. As for me, I’ll continue with the author’s job of holding a mirror up to society.
– PAUL VOLPONI
New York City, N.Y.
