No Ivy League

This is based on the author's experiences as a child (the author uses they/them, but the protagonist is she/her in the book), though everyone but the protagonist has a changed name. Basically, Hazel and her homeschooled boyfriend and best friends are trying to save up for a concert. Part of it is by doing these pro-homeschool ads for a contest. Hazel also takes a job working on removing Ivy from the park. Most of the park staff is made up of PoC (it gets into why). But during the graphic novel, she thirsts after an older man (don't worry she is rejected), and experiences a fair amount of bullying and harassment.

About halfway through the book, it becomes explicit that Hazel is waking up to her white privilege (like, there are next to no homeschooled children of color, it's a mostly white thing, and mostly affulent white thing as you need at least one parent to stay home). When a black boy sexually harasses her, she reports him and he gets fired (which she feels guilty about, plus she's getting shit about it from her peers especially since a black girl was sexually harassed earlier, and while I suspect she did not go to her boss about it, everyone knew about it, and NOTHING happened in that case). She learns the park job is mostly for "At-risk" youth and she was hired to be an "inspiration". She also finds out that part of why she was homeschooled was a reaction to Integrated Schooling. Early in the book, she stresses that her parents are "Hippies" / "Vegan" and NOT religious. So this is a good reminder that you are not required to be a right-wing zealot to be racist.

She researches Oregon's state history and finds out it was founded as a white-only state, that sort of thing.

But basically, she wins the Homeschool ad contest (and now feels weird about promoting the judges' unknown views) and she patches things up with other park employees. Basically Hazel does NOT solve racism, but comes away understanding her role in white supremacy a lot more. (it may also help that several books like "Why Are the Black Kids All Sitting Together in the Cafeteria" are cited in the graphic novel).

I think this book would be a good introductory step for white kids. Sort of like if a white person starts with a Robin DiAngelo book, where there are certainly better books written by people of color, but one thing I've become aware of on my journey to combat racism in my life, is that sometimes a white person DOES need another white person to explain it to them.

Like I don't want to make a sweeping generalization that this is true for every white person, but there's certainly a significant amount of white people this IS true for. I think the key is that the journey may Start with one book, but it does not END with one book.

You get the idea. I was gonna say "This would be good in a library" and that is accurate--as I borrowed my copy from the library