The Color of a Lie

Calvin’s father is a World War II veteran who now works in real estate. After Charlotte’s death, he decides to move their family to Levittown, though he doesn’t initially tell Calvin why. He is depicted as stubborn. Calvin’s father believes that by passing, they are proving that race is a construct used unfairly as a “caste” system to remove opportunities from Black families. With this “barrier” removed, he hopes to accomplish the “American dream.” Calvin’s mother is a quiet woman who Calvin notices is losing her joy and life due to the pressure of passing and conforming to a conservative, suburban “American dream” life in Levittown. Though Calvin feels bitterness toward his father for moving them, he feels love and pity toward his mother. Together, their characters support the theme of Expectations and Reality of the American Dream in the Post-War Period.

Calvin doesn’t know until the end of the novel that his parents have been keeping a secret about why they are passing in Levittown: to help integrate Concord Park and find out who targeted the Sampson family. Prior to this, Calvin thought that his father felt there was something “wrong” with being Black and that his mother’s happiness fell victim to his father’s whims. Calvin’s opinion changes when he sees his mother give Lily’s family shelter unflinchingly and his father accepts Robert and James back into the family.

Robert is Calvin’s older brother and their deceased sister Charlotte’s twin. In Chicago, Robert was active with the NAACP and CORE efforts to integrate their neighborhood. This drew ire toward the Greene family from white residents, who eventually formed a mob and firebombed their house, killing Charlotte. In the aftermath, their father disowned Robert. Calvin is bothered by how the family doesn’t talk about Charlotte and seemingly ignores Robert, even though he works at Sojourner, only a handful of miles away from Levittown. Though light-skinned, Robert cannot pass as easily as the rest of his family.

Robert has tension with their father. Their father initially blames Robert for what happened to Charlotte and does not accept James as Robert’s partner. The rare moment of tension between Calvin and Robert comes about when they are arguing about their definitions of “family.” Calvin wants certain things from Robert because they are “family,” but Robert has built a new family at Sojourner with James and young Black students who have nowhere else to go.

Though Robert is opposed to Eugene and Harry’s civil rights organizing, after Calvin joins them for the CORE meeting, he reluctantly agrees to let them continue if they keep him informed. Robert is Calvin’s confidant in a way their parents are not. He is key in helping the students evacuate Sojourner to safety and in making the plan to keep Darren’s death a secret. Though Calvin’s father accepts him back into the family at the end of the novel, along with his partner, James, Robert chooses to stay at Sojourner so that he doesn’t forsake the young students who have no family but him, showing his compassion.

Lily is Calvin’s love interest. She is the first openly Black student to insist on attending Heritage High. Calvin immediately admires her for her pride and seeming fearlessness. Lily meets the stares and whispers of the Heritage students with a “stoic” bearing, head held high. After seeing Lily’s attitude, Calvin tries to mimic her conduct. She lives in the integrated neighborhood of Concord Park, where Barbara used her power as an employee at Vernon Realty to sell houses to Black families within Heritage’s school district.

Most people are afraid to insist on being allowed at Heritage. Lily tells Calvin about how Eugene planned so incessantly to start integration at Heritage that she finally got fed up and made the application to attend herself, with the help of one of their white allies. When people at Heritage discourage Lily from attending, she demonstrates her strong ethics by telling them why “separate” educational facilities are not “equal.” Though Brown v. Board has already passed, employees at white schools do not seem to realize this.

For instance, when the principal tells Lily that the “other school is just as good,” she says, “My school doesn’t have a nurse’s office. It’s a closet stuffed with cleaning supplies and bandages. The books are old and dated. The building is too small, and the college-going rate is nearly nonexistent. So I think I’ll be the judge of what’s just as good” (69). Though it should not be the responsibility of a teenage student to educate adults about Racial and Social Inequality in Midcentury America in the education system, Lily does so, insisting on her right to study at Heritage until it becomes so dangerous that her mother forbids her from attending.

As Calvin gets to know Lily, he discovers that she is scared and vulnerable about the position she is forced to take in town. Their romance begins almost immediately: Lily can see through Calvin’s facade and tell that he is passing. This perception of his true identity, along with her beauty and his admiration of her conduct at school, draws Calvin to her. Though Lily has a strong moral compass, she only affects the novel’s plot passively as a consequence of her enrollment at Heritage. There are many moments where she physically fills the stereotypical “damsel in distress” archetype. Calvin saves her from Darren’s bullying twice, gets her and her family to safety when a mob attacks their house, and, along with Eugene, saves her from Darren’s assault in the woods.

Eugene and Harry are orphan brothers, 18 and 14, respectively. They are almost always seen together, acting in tandem until the last chapters, when Harry disappears. Calvin meets the brothers at Sojourner, where they live and attend classes. Eugene plays the piano while Harry drums, and together, the three form an informal jazz trio. The day Calvin meets them, he compares their conversation to “music. The joking around. The ease of it all” (58). Music is a symbol that relates to identity, and Calvin feels like he can reveal his true identity around the brothers.

Throughout the novel, they are part of the safe space he can retreat to after the stress of passing in Levittown. Despite this, there are a few moments where Calvin doesn’t seem to realize that the brothers’ dark skin means that they move through the world differently than he does. At the CORE meeting, he accidentally directs the brothers toward a “whites only” bathroom. When Eugene gets mad, Calvin says, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know” (205). This shows that even Calvin is still learning to navigate the nuance behind Racial and Social Inequality in Midcentury America.

While Eugene and Harry do almost everything together, Eugene is slightly more outgoing. He is the one who pushes for their attendance at CORE. After Harry goes missing, Eugene breaks into Vernon’s office and steals all his files. This hasty action inadvertently leads to the formation of the mob outside Lily’s house.

Harry becomes the target of Darren’s racist violence. Harry’s imprisonment and near death is the event that finally convinces Ben not to assimilate with Darren’s crowd. Though Calvin doesn’t see Harry after he leaves for the hospital, he makes a full recovery and continues living at Sojourner. Eugene joins Calvin at Morehouse, where he got a scholarship for integrating Heritage.

Alex is Calvin’s classmate at Heritage and the only true friend he makes there. Calvin’s attention is immediately drawn to Alex because he seems different from his peers. He has “olive” skin similar to Calvin’s, and Alex admits that he only pretends to like things like football. He is interested in things that people in Levittown find transgressive, like comic books.

Calvin feels an immediate connection to Alex, noting his features and hoping there is “someone like [Calvin] at school, even someone Greek or Italian” (34). Calvin begins a real friendship with Alex but also uses this friendship as a cover to visit Lily and to go to the CORE meeting in Virginia. While he is exploiting Alex in a way, Calvin can only do this because Alex is the only student at Heritage who doesn’t want to conform and will keep people’s secrets for their safety. He and Calvin eventually bond over this, and this becomes vital when Alex joins Darren to stop him from committing worse racial violence at Sojourner.

Alex often accompanies Ben, but while Ben tries to assimilate with Darren, Alex joins them to push back. Though he is quiet and non-confrontational, he is often the only one standing up for justice at Heritage. When Heritage students laugh about Emmett Till’s open casket and perpetuate misinformation about him, Alex corrects them, saying that Till was killed simply because he “spoke” to a white woman. Alex’s father was active in supporting integration and defending the Sampson family, the Black family who used to live in Calvin’s house, and he likely passed on his values to Alex. Additionally, Alex is keeping the secret that he is Jewish through his mother’s side, so he empathizes with Calvin’s struggle to hide his identity. When Ben stops talking to Calvin after finding out he is Black, Alex hesitantly keeps talking to him, agreeing to help him look for Harry.

Ben is Calvin’s neighbor and classmate. A morally gray character, Ben at first tries to fit in with Darren, participating in the racist bullying of Lily and reacting negatively when Calvin is honest about his identity. By the end of the novel, his morality realigns, and he wants to prove himself as Calvin’s ally.

Though Calvin likes Ben better than Mary, Ben’s personality makes him nervous and, at times, confused. Ben’s biggest personality trait is his desire to conform. Conformity is the explicit lesson that Levittown encourages. A propaganda film that the students watch in class details the “rules this generation must abide by,” which Calvin interprets as “Conform. Conform. Conform” (35). Ben is in the group with Darren, laughing at the pictures of Till, and helps Darren encircle Lily at school. When Lily accidentally bumps Ben, he pushes her into the middle of the circle, “looking at Darren for approval” (163). His desire for social assimilation leads him to commit racist acts and to overlook deadly acts like Darren locking Harry in the church.

Unlike allies like Bobby Simms and Miss Brower, who center themselves on their activism, Ben makes up for his past actions by respecting how the vulnerable populations around him want him to use his privilege. When Calvin and Eugene want to hide Darren’s body rather than tell the truth, he helps them and swears to secrecy. When Ben apologizes to Calvin and expresses his desire to repent, Calvin says, “Make it right […] When everything changes here, make it right” (314). Though Calvin isn’t present to see the change that comes to Levittown, when they are driving away, he does hear Ben holding Mary accountable for her part in endangering the people at Sojourner. Ben begins to follow through on his promise in action.

Mary is Calvin’s neighbor and classmate and is a minor antagonist. Mary is immediately romantically interested in Calvin after he moves in and continues to pursue him despite his polite disinterest. Her advances start mild, like offering Calvin a car ride to school so that his father doesn’t have to drop him off.

However, her attention becomes more ominous as tensions in the town grow. Mary begins interacting with Calvin in explicitly unwelcome ways, like showing up as his date for the dance unannounced, commenting on his eyes, and touching his hair without permission, which makes Calvin tense “like a porcupine ready to attack” (189). Keeping his hair gelled down is one of the factors in Calvin’s passing.

Mary also represents the panoptic gaze of the town’s white citizens. Mary is always in her window, watching Calvin’s comings and goings. She disseminates the information about his actions to other white residents, like Alex and Ben. She is the one who tells Darren that Calvin is at Sojourner, enabling his attempted attack. Along with Darren, she shows the variety of racial violence in a town like Levittown. People like Mary observe and gather information, which enables people like Darren to carry out physical violence.

Darren is a peer of Calvin’s at Heritage High and one of the novel’s major antagonists. Calvin’s first meeting with Darren at the Heritage High students’ party near the Capewoods foreshadows how Darren has already antagonized Harry before. He tells Calvin that though the Capewoods are haunted, he and Ben had “been through there,” and Ben “got something out of it last time” (25). Calvin does not know what this is about until much later in the novel, but the scene establishes Darren’s “unsettling” personality and the gut instinct Calvin has that he has ill intentions toward Black people. Before the climax of the novel, Darren appears in several more scenes, each of which increases the tension surrounding his character’s racist intentions. For instance, he makes fun of Emmett Till’s open casket in Jet and assaults Lily on the side of the road.

In the climax of the novel, Darren brings Alex and Ben to hunt for the students in Sojourner and burn the building to the ground. Calvin notes that the “mob mentality” of the adults in town is “rubbing off on him—a spark that c[an] catch flame easily” (281). The way the white residents in town perpetuate their violence is by forming overwhelming mobs of people and assaulting and overpowering single homes. Darren hopes to do this at Sojourner but isn’t successful. Individually, he still causes great harm, tackling Lily to the ground and stabbing Eugene in the stomach. Darren’s greatest act of violence is revealed in the plot twist that he is the person who locked Harry in the collapsed tunnels under the Capewoods, leaving him to die.

Darren dies when he slips on snow and hits his head. The author uses poetic irony when Calvin, Ben, Alex, and Eugene choose to hide his body, where Darren left Eugene to die. Darren’s death represents more than the death of a singular villain: It also brings up themes of how the criminal justice system treats Black people. Ben and Alex want to tell the police that Darren’s death was an accident. They don’t know that there is a high chance the police would falsely imprison Calvin or, more probably, Eugene, who is dark-skinned. This is why the boys decide to hide the body and swear each other to secrecy, telling only Robert.