Journal 9-7/7/2010

Amy Blackman
Journal 9
The Secret Life of Bees
This passage (Pg. 178-179) starts off as a response to Jackson telling a white man, “You gotta be dumb as dirt to believe Jack Palance is coming to Tiburon,” (Kidd 178). In a response to this, we see the white man becoming outraged that a black boy had just spoken to him, “What did you say boy?” (Kidd 178). To begin with, we know that the white man is racist; he did want to stop Jack Palence from bringing a black woman to the event. So of course, he would be upset that a black boy would even care to threaten his intelligence and social status.
In this passage, we see Jackson being both the bravest one of the boys as well as being careless. He seems to want to stir up trouble or he is not afraid of what a racist white man will do to him. If he didn’t, he would’ve not have threatened the man or have thrown an R.C. Cola bottle at the man. This incident cut the man and the man started to bleed. He responded by saying, “That nigger busted open my nose” (Kidd 179). The white man seemed almost shocked that a black boy would and could do such a thing. For the longest time, blacks had to obey and respect the whites and the white became used to this concept. The fact that a black boy would threaten a white man would be quite shocking.
When the white men wanted to know who had thrown the bottle, no one admitted it. One man referred to them as a “Bunch of Cowards” (Kidd 179). The black boys wanted to stick together. They were all taking the blame for what Jackson had done. I do not feel the boys were being cowards. This shows how strong of a group they are and that blacks must stick together during this time.
Lily wanted Zach to admit that he was innocent. She even wanted to tell the men, “The one over there. He did it” (Kidd179). However, Zach didn’t admit he was innocent and chose to stick with his friends. Lily became disappointed in Zach, why didn’t he stick up for what was right? She even referred to him as “one of them”. I don’t think that Lily meant to be racist by saying Zach was “one of them”. Meeting Zach and August had caused her to become less of a racist person. It meant that Zach chose to be with the boys that thought committing criminal acts was right. It disappointed Lily to include Zach in a gang because she saw Zach as being so harmless and charming.