In his essay Everybodys Protest Novel, James Baldwin lambastes Harriet Beecher Stowes one-dimensional portrayal of Uncle Tom. The protest novel, he writes, becomes something very closely resembling the zeal of those alabaster missionaries to Africa to cover the nakedness of the natives to reduce all Americans to the compulsive, bloodless dimensions of a guy named Joe. Stowes Uncle Tom, her only black man, has been robbed of his humanity and divested of his sex.

Much like Uncle Tom, Xavier, the perfect biracial teenager, is presented as a nonthreatening fantasy for the books white audience. When a girl sexts Xavier, inviting him for a repeat of an encounter theyve had together, he mechanistically thinks, What straight cis male wouldnt? But Xavier wouldnt, because when it came to hookup culture, hed figured out fast he wasnt built for that. An absurd amount of real estate is given to Xaviers good grades, good work ethic, good recommendations. Before eating an apple, he shines it on his shirt.

Just as Brad Whitman functions as a testimony against flamboyant spending, Xavier operates as a paragon of humility. His car? A paint-flaking Honda. His guitar? He saved up for it by working a minimum-wage job, without a lot of complaint. His matriculation at an elite private college? By means of a substantial scholarship. Xaviers bootstrapping is matched with an active rejection of surface symbols of blackness and hip-hop. I hate cornbread, he says. Out loud. To himself. The idea of wearing diamond earrings? Xavier says, As if. When things turn dire for Xavier, his respectability politics are all he has to cling to: He wasnt just some random black perp, a thug from the hood. He was half white (not that it should matter). Upon discovering the apostrophe in front of the word hood, I was overcome and placed the novel down. As far as Fowlers black characters are concerned, to quote Baldwin, We have only the authors word that they are Negro and they are, in all other respects, as white as she can make them.

A Good Neighborhood is a pitch-perfect example of how literary endeavors of allyship not to be confused with indictments of systemic oppression can limit a novels understanding of human behavior. It provides the same frustration one feels at Thanksgiving, when your self-described open-minded aunt wont shut up about the beautiful gay couple she waves to at the gym. Is it possible to enjoy a work of art with bad politics? Absolutely. Ive seen Pretty Woman nine times, minimum. But when a story is presented as art and activism, it becomes the readers responsibility to take the novel at its repetitive word. Here, in this good neighborhood, it is not a tragedy that violence happens to black men, but rather, that it can happen to one of the good ones. If America is a house on fire, A Good Neighborhood is mostly concerned with exiting quietly, in a single-file line.

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When You Hate Your Neighbor, and Then Your Kids Start Dating - The New York Times