Iggie's House Book

I had to stop reading this book when the White girl slapped the Black boy for taking her to task for her White Savior Complex ("the first time she hit anyone ever!"--and it had to be a Black boy, how nice!) AND his brother didn't put a whoopin' on her for hitting his brother with no justification AND/OR tell his mom or dad that this White girl just hit his brother, at which point mom or dad would have told that White girl to get out of their house!

I really was a 1970s Black kid from Michigan, as the siblings in this book are supposed to be, and I can tell you that if some White kid would have hit any of us among my siblings, whether they were trying to be friends with us or not, that kid would have had another thing coming! We had distrust and fear of White people anyway, and a White kid who tried to befriend us while saying the expected stupid stuff White kids say to Black kids ("Are you from Africa? Did you or your parents loot in the riots?") and then turned around and hit one of us would have confirmed our beliefs that White people are mean to Black people and not to be trusted.

I was starting to like this book, too. It does honestly portray White liberal "benign" racist thinking and how it manifests in the minds of White kids especially, like the White girl in the story. This girl really expects these Black kids to go ga-ga because she's "one of the good ones," and when one of them lets her know that it's really not all about her and as a kid she doesn't have all the White privilege and power she thinks she has, the White girl slaps him like Scarlett slapped her slave! Ugh.