To the Editor:
Author Paul Volponi’s defense of his novel “Black and White” only obliquely addressed the central issue of the imbroglio enveloping the Lower Township Elementary Board of Education. That is, is his book appropriate for an elementary school library?
After a gratuitous recitation of how well the book was received and the accolades it garnered, Volponi concedes “there is some stark language in the book.”
He writes of a disturbing incident on a train involving a homeless man, which he claims was drawn from personal experience. The implication is the diction used to describe this incident was justified for the sake of realism.
After several extremely offensive racial epithets and anti-Semitic remarks, the deranged homeless man, who happens to be White, turned his psychosis on a White girl. “One day (expletive) are going to (expletive) you too. They’re going to (expletive) you good, and you’ll love it!”
After being pushed out of the train by a few of the riders, the homeless man reappears and tells the same White girl that “sooner or later some Black guy is going to ‘ramrod’” her. Although hardly a literary classic, at this point, whatever value the novel has as an expose on the disparities of the criminal justice system are rendered moot.
The other criticism about the book, which Volponi blithely dismisses as “desperate warnings” and “code words,” is the influence of critical race theory (CRT) in both the character and plot development of the novel.
CRT promulgates the doctrine of intersectionality, which asserts that all aspects of American society have a nexus in racism, creating but two classes of people – victim and victimizer, i.e., Black and White.
Volponi claims he is merely holding a mirror up to society; however, it must be one of those old, distorted “fun house” mirrors.
Take for example the development of the character Eddie Russo (aka White). Volponi pulled him right out of CRT central casting because Eddie is the living embodiment of “White fragility” and “White privilege.” After all, it was Eddie who came up with the idea to start robbing people; he brought the pistol to the robberies; he held and fired the pistol that injured the bus driver; he signed the scholarship to play college basketball the same night Marcus was arrested; and he is the one who ultimately escaped justice because he wouldn’t turn himself in and save Marcus from a harsher prison sentence.
It is an obvious metaphor for how CRT proponents want to portray Whites as too fragile to accept their purported complicity, culpability, and lack of accountability for the condition of Black America.
What Volponi fails to include in his narrative, however, is that, irrespective of Eddie’s actions, Marcus is equally culpable for his own.
Another component of Eddie’s character development is that of White privilege. White is allegedly privileged to live with both parents in a home they own, where Black lives in a housing project with just his mother and sister; however, Volponi chose to gloss over the effect of Marcus’ absentee father who only called him on two occasions to wish him a happy birthday.
Volponi implies that the Black security guard who took it upon himself to look after Marcus and his mother more than make up for this unfortunate cultural phenomenon of the inner-city Black community. This, combined with the fact that over 50% of the violent crimes in this country are committed by young, Black men, is a more accurate explanation for why Marcus only sees “Black faces” on Rikers Island.
