Arnetta's Revenge Plan

388 Words2 Pages
Laurel, who is the only one girl in African American troop to doubt Arnetta’s revenge plan due to a racial slur, is impartial so that she becomes an obstacle to the revenge plan; however, the experiences throughout the brownie troop reminds her of a true story Mennonite family, which makes her realizes that racism is impossible to come over. At first, she seldom has negative prejudice like envy and hatred on the White people. But after going through the conflict with the White girls, she has to accept the fact of racism. At the beginning of “Brownies,” she is very hesitant and doubtable to agree with Arnetta’s plan because she thinks the plan is childish. She thinks “A secret meant nothing; it was like gossip: just a bit of unpleasant knowledge about…show more content…
Margolin, are you?’” (Packer 10). Since there is a gap among Laurel and her teammates, she knows “if I spoke even a word, I could count on someone calling me Snot” (Packer 13). When the revenge plan is developing, Laurel as a follower, is afraid of making trouble. She asks what if the White girls deny that they have said “Nigger.” However, she witnesses how the revenge plan fails and how Arnetta looks “stoic” after the failure. Finally, she shares her father’s experience about a Mennonite family to her teammates and she realizes that “there was something mean in the world that I could not stop” (Packer 31). She doesn’t understand why her father refuses to thank a white man who helps him for free, but now she gets it — “When you’ve been made to feel bad for so long, you jump at the chance to do it to others” (Packer, 31). Laurel, who has no idea of racial prejudice at the beginning, within four days, she goes through a process of doubting, following and accepting. She can feel the shadow of racism and she knows that no matter how she tries to fight with it, like what Arnetta does for Daphne, it is impossible to change the
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