Identify: “We can’t let them get away with calling us n*****s. I say we teach them a lesson (pg 8).” This is near the beginning of the story when Arnetta claims that one of the troopers in the 909 troop, full of white girls, called Daphne the N-word.
Contextualize: Throughout the story, Arnetta’s voice is the loudest and is clearly the leader of the girls in the troop, along with Octavia who mostly just agrees with what Arnetta says and does. On page 8, the narrator says “sometimes Octavia would ditto or dissent to whatever arnetta had said, and this was the signal that others could speak.” From the moment we are introduced to Arnetta, we know that she is not a nice girl. The narrator tells the story of Arnetta killing the troop goldfish by feeding it a french fry, and then lying and saying it leaped from its tank and snatched her french fry from her hand. She is also described using Caucasion as an insult to people at school and in the troop.
Claim: I claim that Arnetta did not want payback for what the girls in troop 909 may or may not have said, but saw an opportunity to flex her power on another group and make them feel bad about themselves.
Explicate: When the situation of being called the N-word arises, it is not brought up by Daphne, who the word was apparently directed at. INstead, Arnetta brought it up to the group and seemed to have to pry the accusation out of quiet Daphne. On page 7, “Daphne, didn’t you hear them call you a n*****? Arnetta asked, giving daphne a nudge….Daphne shrugged her shoulders at first then slowly nodded her head when Arnetta gave her a hard look.” I think this proves that Arnetta was looking for an opportunity to be mean to someone else because she seemed unsatisfied when Daphne did not immediately confirm the story. She also had to physically nudge Daphne to get it out of her, who clearly did not care enough about the situation let alone cause trouble. The second piece of evidence is after the girls confront troop 909 and are on the bus home and Octavia asks “why did we have to be stuck at a camp with retarded girls? You know (28)?” Arnetta responds saying she knows why and “my mama and I were in the mall in Buckhead, and this white lady just kept looking at us. I mean, like we were foreign or something (28).” Arnetta has clearly been subject to discrimination and been treated a certain way becasue of her skin color. So when she saw an opportunity to be mean to someone else, as people have been to her before, she took it.