Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Dear Martin, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Privilege, Entitlement, and Implicit Bias
Appearances and Assumptions
Support, Acceptance, and Belonging
Opportunity and Upward Mobility
The Media and Public Discourse
Summary
Analysis
After class, Jared, Manny, and their white friends Blake, Kyle, and Tyler enter the “senior lounge.” Justyce is also present, but nobody sees him because he’s sitting in a booth in the back of the room. As he sits there, he listens to Jared complain about the conversation in Societal Evolution. “Can you believe that asshole?” he says about Doc. “What kind of teacher has the nerve to suggest there’s racial inequality to a classroom full of millennials?” Since Blake, Kyle, and Tyler weren’t there, he explains what happened, saying that he might even have his father call the school to complain. “And of course SJ jumped right on it,” he says. “ I think the fact that her mom has to constantly defend all those thugs is starting to screw with her head.” Blake, Kyle, and Tyler laugh, and Manny joins in after a brief pause.
During this conversation, it becomes clear that Jared is upset by the mere fact that Doc staged a conversation about inequality in school. When he says, “What kind of teacher has the nerve to suggest that there’s racial inequality to a classroom full of millennials?”, he acts as if racism is a thing of the past—a problem for earlier generations. Jared is again unwilling to examine his own prejudices, and so is frustrated that someone like SJ might force him to more closely evaluate his attitude regarding race.
Themes
Still talking about SJ, Jared says, “If you ask me, she wants Justyce to pop her little cherry.” In response, Kyle references the fact that Jared himself never had sex with SJ when they used to date, but Jared just says, “Shut up. We were in eighth grade.” Still, his friends continue to give him a hard time, saying that he clearly still likes her. “Too late, though…if Justyce is your competition you’re screwed, dog,” Kyle says. “‘Once you go black,’ right, Manny?” Once again, Manny offers weak laughter. Changing the subject, Jared says he’s “sick of people suggesting African Americans still have it so hard these days.” He then says that Manny’s parents are “proof that things are equal now,” and Blake immediately agrees. All of the white boys then agree that “things really are equal nowadays” and that they live in a “color-blind society.”
It’s easy for Manny’s white friends to believe that they live in an equal, “color-blind” society. After all, they’ve never had to come face to face with discrimination because of their race. What they fail to recognize, though, is that their limited experiences aren’t representative of the entire nation, especially since they are wealthy young people attending a prestigious preparatory school. Nonetheless, their relatively unchallenged outlook makes them confident that it’s all right to make sweeping claims about equality, failing to see that they’re leaving very little room for Manny to disagree.
Themes
Turning to Manny, Kyle enthusiastically informs him that he doesn’t even see him has black. Manny laughs awkwardly at this, but Justyce—who is still listening undetected—knows his friend is just pretending. “The statement just makes Justyce think about those handcuffs…these fools might not ‘see’ Manny ‘as black,’ but Justyce knows damn well the police would,” Stone notes. However, Jared, Kyle, Blake, and Tyler don’t pick up on Manny’s discomfort. Instead, Jared tells them to “raise [their] Perrier bottles to EQUALITY!” All of them do this except Manny, prompting Jared to turn to him and say, “Manny? You with us, bro?” After a brief pause, Manny says, “Course I am, bro. Equality!”
The idea of a “color-blind” society is rather fraught, since it ultimately promotes the erasure of racial and cultural identities, which isn’t actually what it means to live under equality. Instead of ignoring a person’s blackness, the goal of equality is to recognize race without letting this recognition lead to discrimination or prejudice. Because Manny’s white friends don’t see the need to examine their own biases and tendencies toward casual racism, though, they feel unjustifiably comfortable telling him that they don’t see him as black. When Justyce notes that the police would certainly see Manny as black, he astutely pinpoints why it’s problematic to pretend race doesn’t exist, especially in a world in which so many injustices are based on the color of a person’s skin.
Themes
