47 pages • 1 hour read
Paul VolponiBlack And White
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 5-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 5 Summary: “Black”
The bus driver Eddie shot, a man named Sidney Parker, recognizes Marcus and identifies him in the school yearbook. Marcus is arrested and taken to the police station, where he is questioned by detectives. They pressure him to give up the name of his partner, but Marcus refuses. Coach Casey’s wife arrives to tell Marcus not to worry and to let him know that both his mother and Coach are on their way. As the detectives continue to question Marcus, they tell him the names of the two people he and Eddie robbed before Sidney Parker. They continue to ask him questions, but Marcus does not disclose Eddie’s involvement in the crimes. When the detectives lead him out of the interrogation room, he sees his mother, Coach Casey, and his wife sitting in the hallway, but is not allowed to talk to them.
Chapter 6 Summary: “White”
Eddie’s sister Rose finds out that Marcus was arrested and demands answers from Eddie as to what happened. Coach Casey left as soon as the game ended, and college scouts are waiting outside his office. Eddie has spoken to the scout from St. John’s before. Not wanting to pass up his chance to play college basketball, Eddie approaches the scout directly and tells him he wants to play for their school. The scout is glad to hear this and tells Eddie to fax a letter of intent.
Eddie hurries home. He gets his grandfather’s gun from the attic and, pretending to walk his dog, walks down to the Hell Gate Bridge and tosses the gun into the East River below. He arrives back home where his family is waiting for him, asking him if he heard anything about Marcus. Eddie tells his family that he accepted the scholarship to St. John’s and sends his letter of intent. He spends the next day at school dodging questions about Marcus and tells his peers he does not know anything. The others on the basketball team hear the news about Marcus’s arrest. Coach Casey refuses to talk about it during practice, only reporting that Marcus will be home in the next couple of days. He prompts Eddie to announce his college plans to the rest of the team.
Chapter 7 Summary: “Black”
Marcus goes “through the system” (61), taking mugshots and being fingerprinted. He spends the night in a jail cell with other inmates before being transported to a courthouse. Marcus’s mother is there along with Coach Casey, his wife, and the lawyer assigned to Marcus’s case, Ms. Torres. Ms. Torres says Marcus will receive less time in jail if he identifies the shooter, but Marcus refuses. His bail is set at 20 thousand dollars, and he is put on a bus to Rikers Island. On Rikers Island, Marcus notes that nearly all his fellow inmates are Black.
Marcus spends the next couple of days on Rikers Island getting acclimated until an officer lets him know he was bailed out. His mother and sister come to take him home. At home, Marcus’s mother demands he explain himself and admit Eddie’s involvement in the shooting, as she knows Eddie was involved. Marcus still does not admit Eddie’s involvement. He goes to bed and thinks about Eddie, knowing that if he had been caught instead of Marcus, Eddie would have kept Marcus safe from the cops too. The next morning before school, Marcus finds his new Nike Marauders, which he had purchased with the money from the robberies, in the trash.
He meets up with Rose and Eddie before walking to school to talk about what has happened. Throughout the day, other students ask Marcus what happened, including the basketball team. After practice, Eddie and Marcus talk, and Marcus mentions that his mother suspects Eddie’s involvement. Marcus asks if Eddie is worried about being seen out with him, to which Eddie responds, “Who doesn’t already know about Black and White?” (81).
Chapter 8 Summary: “White”
As Eddie arrives home from school, he sees a black sedan parked outside. When he enters, two detectives are inside talking to his parents. The detectives ask Eddie questions about the robberies, the shooting, and Marcus. They ask if the family keeps a .38 caliber revolver in their home, and Eddie’s parents deny it vehemently. When the detectives leave, Eddie's father “rip[s] into Marcus” (84), judging where he grew up. Eddie knows the police suspect his involvement, but do not have enough evidence to arrest him.
That night, Eddie struggles to sleep and goes up to the attic. There, his dad is sitting on his grandfather’s bed, holding the shoebox; he knows Eddie took the gun. The next day, the shoebox is gone, and Eddie’s father acts as if nothing happened.
A couple of days later, the detectives arrive again to arrest Eddie; the woman they had robbed picked his picture out of the school yearbook. At the station, Eddie refuses to talk to the detectives without a lawyer present, but the detectives already know what happened and try to convince him to admit to his involvement, saying the DA would go easier on him if he did. Marcus, they claim, is likely to give him up.
Eddie spends the night in jail and is sent to court the next day. Before court, he meets with his lawyer, Mr. Golub, who briefs Eddie on what to expect in the courtroom. Eddie goes into the courtroom, where his family are all seated, and his bail is set. After his court hearing, his family bails him out.
Chapters 5-8 Analysis
The novel continues with the dual point of view structure. In alternating between Marcus and Eddie’s points of view, the disparities between them become more obvious in the aftermath of the shooting and Marcus’s resulting arrest. There is a sharp, sobering contrast between the two boys: Eddie announces his scholarship to St. John’s, and Marcus goes to jail and then to Rikers Island, which features frightening conditions. Marcus witnesses the lack of space and privacy in the prison. He is required to put on a tough facade to avoid being harassed and injured by other inmates. In another instance of sharp contrast, when Eddie is arrested he has a completely different experience of the criminal justice system: He is able to avoid jail when his family bails him out.
These chapters explore Discrimination in the Justice System. It is clear here, both through Marcus and Eddie’s situations and their observations while in jail, that the prison population in New York City is predominantly Black. The novel demonstrates how socioeconomic inequality directly plays into this imbalance—Marcus, as the son of a single mother, was bailed out only after his mother begged her sister for financial help. Meanwhile, Eddie is released with relative ease due to his family’s financial security. Similarly, the boys’ legal representation is different. Through this contrast, Volponi highlights the inherent unfairness of the cash bail system: Eddie is able to avoid the harrowing experience of Rikers Island because his parents have more disposable income to pay his bail.
When Marcus returns to school after his arrest, his peers on the basketball team give voice to the justice system’s disregard for Black people. As Moses notes: “The only thing in your favor is the dude who got shot is black. Maybe the judge won’t give a damn, unless the judge is black, too” (78).
These systemic inequities help to inflame Racial Tension in Urban Settings. The overrepresentation of Black men in the prison system contributes to stereotypes and negative images of Black men, and particularly Black youth, as criminals. For example, when Marcus is arrested, Eddie’s family immediately assumes that Marcus is guilty, despite having formerly embraced him as part of the family, and initially does not suspect Eddie’s part in the robbery. They blame Marcus’s neighborhood and upbringing for influencing him, as though his actions were inevitable. Further, systemic disparity fosters resentment among Black communities against white people, who are perceived as both unfairly advantaged and indifferent to the struggles of the Black community, as exemplified by Moses’s earlier quote. This serves to exacerbate distrust and tension on both sides.
In this section, Marcus is challenged to choose between his loyalty to Eddie and their brotherly bond and everything he has on the line: his basketball scholarship, his future, and his freedom. Unlike Eddie, Marcus exhibits Integrity in the Face of Guilt and Consequences. He confronts the fallout from his actions and asserts that, if the roles had been reversed, Eddie would have covered for Marcus the same way. However, Eddie’s actions following Marcus’s arrest cast this into doubt. In sharp contrast to Marcus’s loyalty, Eddie does not hesitate to claim a scholarship to St. John’s and denies knowledge regarding Marcus’s arrest, showing his tendency toward self-preservation over truth.
Additionally, there is a stark difference between the way Marcus’s mother and Eddie’s parents deal with their sons’ guilt. Marcus’s mother is not in denial about Marcus’s guilt and demands the truth. She is not opposed to Marcus facing the consequences of his actions; she throws away his Nike Marauders and states that he needs to “start doing things for [himself] more” (72). In contrast, Eddie’s family is affronted when the detectives first question him. When Eddie’s father discovers the gun is missing, all but confirming his son’s guilt, he never mentions it again and still fights to protect Eddie. By exploring this contrast, Volponi highlights the difficulty of accepting responsibility for one’s actions and bearing the resulting consequences.
This section shows the cracks in Eddie and Marcus’ friendship and its supposed ability to transcend racial boundaries. Before they were close as brothers. Now, Eddie is predominantly concerned with preserving his future while Marcus takes full blame for the robberies. The imbalance in their friendship becomes clear as Marcus vehemently refuses to admit Eddie’s involvement in order to protect him while expecting nothing from Eddie in return.
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