Black Brother, Black Brother tells the story of two brothers, Donte and Trey. Despite having the same parents, Donte presents as a Black boy, while Trey presents as a white boy. While Trey is treated as a human being worthy of dignity and respect, Donte is not. In fact, Donte is treated in horrific, racist ways by his peers. In fact, Donte is unjustly accused of doing something and is arrested by the police despite the fact that he didn't do what he was accused of.
In that sense, Black Brother, Black Brother is an exploration of and meditation on the school to prison pipeline theory, which posits that students of color face harsher consequences (in school and outside of school with law enforcement) than their white counterparts. In other words, students of color are more likely than their white peers to be placed in jail because of behavior that wouldn't land their white peers in the criminal justice system. In an interview to promote the novel, author Jewell Parker Rhodes said that "Once arrested even for minor infractions, the odds that a student [of color] will be entrapped by the criminal justice system and not graduate, double."
Eventually, Donte decides to take matters into his own hands and takes up fencing. He hopes to be the best he could be to dethrone the racist captain of the fencing team who had treated him horribly. Donte works hard to hone his fencing skills and confront his bullies and racism. But to do so, he must find his voice--a unique voice independent from anyone else. To that end, Black Brother, Black Brother is a novel about identity and how young people oftentimes struggle to find a voice for themselves.
Rhodes wrote Black Brother, Black Brother for one simple reason, a reason which became the ethos for the novel: "All children," she said in an interview, "deserve equal treatment; one should not be privileged because of skin tone."
