The Importance Of Perception In 'All American Boys'

Perception is a way of regarding, understanding or interpreting something. All American Boys by Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely is a novel where perception is the difference between life and death. The novel is written through the eyes of two high school boys, Rashad and Quinn. Rashad is an African American student at Reserve Officers ' Training Corps who is accused of stealing and beaten almost to death by a police officer. Quinn is a caucasian American who witnessed the altercation and finds out that the officer who beat Rashad is his best friend’s brother. As the novel progresses, the entire school and town are aware of the incident because it was caught on camera and also due to the fact that Rashad has been absent from school due to the injuries he faced. A divided nation …show more content…
Quinn then realizes that he has to get an understanding of what happened and pick a side because he was a witness and no matter, what he was apart of history that was bigger than him and bigger than just this once incident.
This novel agrees with my world view that more people need to understand what police brutality is and how it affects the entire African American race. All American Boys also agrees with how I think that more people need to put themselves in the shoes of African Americans and get a feel for the racism that they face in their day to day lives. Jason Reynolds and Brendan Kiely, the authors of the novel, show the perspective of Rashad and his family and this allows the readers to gain an insight and understanding of what it feels like to be a victim of police brutality. The characters in the book each have a different opinion and stance on police brutality and the incident that happened to Rashad. Rashad’s brother, Spoony, is one of the characters that firmly believes that their family should do something about the issue and that they can not be complacent about their son being wrongfully accused because of the color