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"If you would just listen to the song—it’s not what they made it out to be, I swear. It’s about playing into their assumptions about me."
"You don’t get that luxury, Brianna! We don’t! They never think we’re just playing!"
This quotation takes place at the beginning of Chapter Eighteen after Jay hears Bri’s song for the first time in a news segment about the riot at her high school. Here, Jay echoes the argument that Malik, Aunt Pooh, Trey, and others all make throughout the novel: that Bri’s song is dangerous for Bri because white authorities can’t see past their own assumptions about Black people. By rapping about violence, Bri risks being seen as violent. Bri tries repeatedly to argue that her song critiques the stereotypes that Black people in her neighborhood are aggressive, gang-affiliated hoodlums. However, Jay points out here that Black people aren’t free enough from white perceptions and white power to even make that critique. For Jay, the mother of Black children in a neighborhood where Black people can be shot in the street by cops, the risks of such critiques are too high.
