Reverse discrimination can still hurt

Malorie Blackman's Naughts & Crosses is the first in a series of four books set in an alternate universe in which Blacks (Crosses) had power and Whites (Naughts - nothings) were held as slaves.  When we join the universe, slavery has been abolished for about a century and schools are just starting to be integrated, but there is a very long way to go.

The book is centered on two characters.  Sephy is the daughter of a powerful Cross family.  Her father is an important government official and her mother is an alcoholic.  Callum is Sephy's best friend.  He's a Naught and his father and brother are getting involved in the Liberation Army movement to fight for equal rights through violence and fear.

I was really interested in reading this book because I wanted to see what we could learn from the history of race relations by turning the situation on its head.  It's important not to look at history as inevitable, but as a series of choices that people made and could have changed at any point along the way.  Things could have gone very differently and it's important to know that.

Blackman uses that lens to look at history and gives us an alternate universe in which, historically, it was the whites that were oppressed by the blacks.  Unfortunately, though, that's about all she changed.  Rather than taking a hard look (and perhaps a more subtle approach) at how racism affects us all, Blackman came out with a lot of violence and anger and hatred on every side of the debate, with the ending message of, "See what happens when people are racist?  Bad things."  There wasn't much nuance or room for debate.

Thankfully, Blackman does give us both the Naught & Cross sides of the argument in this book - we learn from both Sephy and Callum and can see that both families are equally frightened of and worried by the other.  So you can see that racism goes both ways and cuts deep.  But that just made it even harder to believe in the central friendship.  While Sephy and Callum are supposed to be wonderful friends who tell each other everything... well, they don't seem to get along for a lot of the book, and I didn't quite believe in their friendship.

I do think this book does a good job of bringing to light just how much race can impact a society.  For example, when a Naught model gets on the cover of a major fashion magazine for the first time, Sephy doesn't understand why it's a big deal or a newsworthy event.  When a Naught classmate needs a bandaid, there are none available in a shade that matches her skin tone.  When students are taught history, they only learn about Crosses who changed the world, not about Naughts who contributed to the way our world is today.  I think it's important for the young adult audience at which this book is targeted to understand these issues and think about them more critically.  And so for that, I am really glad this book exists and I hope it is on reading lists so that students can have a real dialogue about it.

But, quite honestly, I will not be continuing with this series myself.  I found it overly dramatic, I didn't like the characters, and the last 75 pages or so bothered me so much!  I can't explain why, though, because that would probably be a spoiler.  But ugh.

It DOES seem as though this book is hugely popular with a younger audience.  So maybe, read it and consider if you would have liked it when you were 14 or so?  Or maybe if you really like thrillers and fast-paced plots, look into this one.  You will probably enjoy it more than I did.