this is how you ally.
I’m so glad I came across this because I just finished Simon last night and I have to admit that that small moment, a throwaway comment really, did ping my radar as annoying and just wrong. It’s the kind of thing that would make me rev up for a fight IRL, but in the book, I do think that it’s a fairly believable viewpoint for a 17 year-old white boy from Georgia to have. It’s great to see Becky discussing the impact of that line though and recognizing that it’s not something she wants to perpetuate in the future, even if it was meant to be a faulty 17 year-old opinion in-verse.
This is a really good example of something we’ve talked about a lot (and is frequently misunderstood). Characters should have misconceptions and false ideas about their world. That’s what makes them people. If they go unchallenged, though, even if what you intended to be clearly wrong may not come off that way.