Privilege, Racism, and Intersection of Oppressive Systems

The setting at Braselton Prep allows Nic Stone to explore the ways that privilege—including wealth and membership in the white majority—isolates people from wider social issues. Since Jared and his friends Kyle, Tyler, and Blake are white and affluent, they are never treated with disrespect or even violence based on uncontrollable aspects of their identity. This insulation allows them to believe that they live in a post-race society, and it allows them to roll their eyes at SJ’s feminist statements. They live in a tiny enclave where those issues can be ignored because it admits very few people who would suffer in those systems anyway. Thus Jared can look around his lunch table and adapt Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech: “Right here, right now, on these red hills of Georgia, a son...