Police Brutality and a Hard Life Choice Books cannot save human life; However, they can change hearts and minds of a human. 'All American Boys,' by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is one of those books. ‘All American Boys’ is a young adult novel that looks at a specific instance of police brutality and racial profiling from the perspectives of two high school classmates. For those who have not experienced racial profiling or do not know someone has, it may seem to be nothing more than a mere inconvenience. However, for characters in the novel, racial profiling changes their perspective. At first main character of the book is Rashad Butler, a 16-year-old junior R.O.T.C. member and young black man suffered mentally and physically discrimination …show more content…
Supporters of his high school and around town take up the cause with a phrase that is graffitied on sidewalks and the town's walls: Rashad Is Absent Again Today. (p.165) Then Rashad is absent. and absent again. and again. and the basketball team—half of whom are Rashad’s best friends—start to take sides. as does the school. and the town. Simmering tensions threaten to explode as Rashad and Quinn are forced to face decisions and consequences they had never considered before. Outraged at the injustice, Rashad’s fellow students rise in protest. Meanwhile, Quinn wrestles with what he's seen. It's complicated by the fact that the police officer who beat Rashad is a close family friend — his best friend's big brother. Quinn can't believe the man he knows would beat anyone if the person on the receiving end didn't deserve it. He's always seen police as protectors. He wants the whole thing to just go away. However, Quinn spends the book deciding where his loyalties lie worthy considerations, indeed, but pale compared with the life-altering physical and psychological damage Rashad experiences. Another point in the book is a person can get a lot of advantage only for a specific racial preference, which is not