David, the protagonist of this book is at a special point in his life. He’s starting off in 6th grade at MLK middle school. The school’s attending students are mostly black, and David is white. He has a “friend” who is also white but the difference between them would be their wealth. David is more on the unfortunate side, he can’t get the clothes he wants, and wears a pair of filas that he’s tired of wearing over and over again. Relative to Kevin who can pretty much afford what he want. From the beginning we learn that David is young, unfortunate, and in a racially different atmosphere. In school it’s a hard adjustment for David to get through and he can’t seem to find where he fits socially one hundred percent. That’s because he’s treated so differently from a variety of people. David is chill with Kevin but that’s mostly because they were cool as kids. Consistently Kevin shows that he isn’t truly David’s friend and is cool with the kid that picks on him and even entertains it. In Chapter 1 near the ending David was playing basketball with some random kid at the park along with Kev and Simon, Kev and Simon go out the park real quick and come back to see David in the middle of getting robbed. Instead of helping or doing anything, Kevin is left to fend for himself. This sort of shows the negative side of the relationship between Kev and David. Something that can be found very interesting is in the beginning of Chapter 2 when David compares his old school to him in MLK. . Kevin talks about how in his school was diverse and encouraged racial diversity. A little before that he speaks of something called “the force” and he says he doesn’t blame the kid for doing what he did to him, he uses the force to justify this action. The force can be best described as a sense of the barrier between one another, an example that would fit this would be two kids who are of different race. Overall in both the chapter’s the protagonist David constantly finds himself facing diversity in positive and negative aspects.
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