What if your job was not just a job, not just a means of putting food on the table and financially providing for your life? What if your job was a calling, a passion, something you were MEANT to do? Imagine that, imagine a job that is fulfilling, that has its ups and downs like any job, but in the end you couldn’t imagine yourself doing anything else.
Now, imagine that being taken from you, not because of something you did, but because of the color of your skin. Something that if you are white, like me, you’ve never really thought twice about. Yeah you’re white, you might turn red in the sun rather than tan, you might joke about being white. But at the core of it you’ve never had something taken from you because you are white.
In Jodi Picoult’s “Small Great Things”, this exact scenario happens to Ruth Jefferson. Ruth is a black woman, she has busted her ass past all prejudice and road blocks thrown in her way to become a stellar labor and deliver nurse, then one day she is thrown off a case because a white supremacist thinks she is unworthy of caring for his child. Because she is black. It spirals and snowballs into her being on trial for the murder of that infant, even though she did nothing to harm the child.
I cannot speak to the devastation of having something taken away from me because of the color of my skin, or having achieved something in spite of the obstacles my skin color throws at me, because there are none. I can however speak to having a calling. Something that you feel in your bones is what you are supposed to be spending your life doing. I can speak to how gut wrenching and completely soul crushing it would be to have that taken from me.
The novel continues, through a three way narrative between Ruth, the white supremacist father, and Ruth’s lawyer, a white woman who “does not see color” and like many of us is very sensitive to being called racist, very uncomfortable talking about race.
As you travel through the novel this three way narrative really gives a whole perspective of the story. You have the extremist father who can’t see anything past his own hatred, which at its core stems from the pain of a young child that was exploited until he turned into the monster he now is. The color blind lawyer who is trying to be a good person and yet also not understanding the narrative that is being laid out for her. And Ruth, the woman who did everything right and has still has her life upturned.
This novel was extremely eye opening. Race is something we entirely need to see and acknowledge, it is not something we can ignore and pretend doesn’t matter. Race does matter, until we acknowledge that, accept that and work towards repairing the broken trust between us and people of color, we cannot move forward. Anyone who has a dream, a calling, a passion, should be able to pursue that 100%. No one should be made a scapegoat.
Acknowledge that you are white, acknowledge that it means you have privilege. You have the privilege to even have to acknowledge your race, because it is not being thrown in your face at every single turn.
“Small Great Things” by Jodi Picoult
https://www.google.com/books/edition/Small_Great_Things/eT5mCwAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0
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