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A review by heykellyjensen
Accountable: The True Story of a Racist Social Media Account and the Teenagers Whose Lives It Changed by Dashka Slater
What does justice mean and how do we decide who has served it and when it has done what it is meant to do? These are the core questions in Slater's absorbing, timely, and powerful new YA nonfiction book. Albany High School has a reputation for being a great place for kids to attend school. But in 2017, a boy at the school created a private Instagram account filled with racist memes he created. When word gets out about the account, he and the followers find themselves being punished by the school–but how does one determine what the appropriate punishment is for the creator vs. those who followed and did not interact vs. those who followed and interacted? And where and how did the creator decide this was an okay thing to do?
This book asks more questions than it answers, but this is purposeful. We get to know ALL of the players here, including the Black girls who found themselves at the center of many of these racist memes. Can any punishment be enough to make them feel safe or as if justice has been served? As victims, how do they determine what is a "normal" amount of anger or grief or fear and when it seems like it might be too much? Can simply seeing one of those associated with the account trigger a trauma response?
At times, I felt myself wanting to make a decision one way or the other. Punish the boys harder is where I fall on one page, then immediately think the boys are truly trying to do better and yet aren't given the opportunity to show that. This sitting with the belief *both* things can be true is the core of this book. Slater does not choose sides nor tell this in such a way you're to believe one is better or more right than the other. Instead, this is as complex as a nesting doll: once you begin to believe one thing, another opens up and begs you to look closer and closer.
Exceptionally timely, I appreciated, too, the legal elements of this case and how the lawyers who got involved argued. I did not agree with much of it from the boys' side, and I struggled alongside Andrea in wondering if seeking restitution would be worthwhile so long after the event took place (in legal time, that is). I found the end of the book to be what I needed as a reader, with a simple snapshot of where each of the major players in the story were now. Slater masterfully weaves in other meaty themes and topics into this book, including shame and humiliation, the differences between justice and restorative justice, and where and how systems which should be prepared for interpersonal challenges are so often not ready for them. The adults in this book–every single one of them–is messy and complicated, unsure of the right answer to anything. I do think the administration was Not Great At All and simultaneously think they did what they could with the information they had at hand at the time. Would it look different now, with experience to pull from? I'd like to think so.
The book is lengthy and it earns every page. My only slight quibble is in formatting. It seems like Slater was afraid to commit to a straightforward narrative. There are, at times, poetic expressions of the facts that don't move seamlessly or add much to the story itself. I wish she'd picked one or the other, instead of trying to do more than one thing. The story (and her telling of it!) offered enough opportunity for that.
This book asks more questions than it answers, but this is purposeful. We get to know ALL of the players here, including the Black girls who found themselves at the center of many of these racist memes. Can any punishment be enough to make them feel safe or as if justice has been served? As victims, how do they determine what is a "normal" amount of anger or grief or fear and when it seems like it might be too much? Can simply seeing one of those associated with the account trigger a trauma response?
At times, I felt myself wanting to make a decision one way or the other. Punish the boys harder is where I fall on one page, then immediately think the boys are truly trying to do better and yet aren't given the opportunity to show that. This sitting with the belief *both* things can be true is the core of this book. Slater does not choose sides nor tell this in such a way you're to believe one is better or more right than the other. Instead, this is as complex as a nesting doll: once you begin to believe one thing, another opens up and begs you to look closer and closer.
Exceptionally timely, I appreciated, too, the legal elements of this case and how the lawyers who got involved argued. I did not agree with much of it from the boys' side, and I struggled alongside Andrea in wondering if seeking restitution would be worthwhile so long after the event took place (in legal time, that is). I found the end of the book to be what I needed as a reader, with a simple snapshot of where each of the major players in the story were now. Slater masterfully weaves in other meaty themes and topics into this book, including shame and humiliation, the differences between justice and restorative justice, and where and how systems which should be prepared for interpersonal challenges are so often not ready for them. The adults in this book–every single one of them–is messy and complicated, unsure of the right answer to anything. I do think the administration was Not Great At All and simultaneously think they did what they could with the information they had at hand at the time. Would it look different now, with experience to pull from? I'd like to think so.
The book is lengthy and it earns every page. My only slight quibble is in formatting. It seems like Slater was afraid to commit to a straightforward narrative. There are, at times, poetic expressions of the facts that don't move seamlessly or add much to the story itself. I wish she'd picked one or the other, instead of trying to do more than one thing. The story (and her telling of it!) offered enough opportunity for that.