College, like any other institution, is a Mecca for social and racial strain. However, it can also be a pilgrimage towards knowledge about cultural wrongdoings. "The Ordinary White Boy" is a new novel by Brock Clarke. The book divulges racial tension after an onset of small town occurrences ö a black family's house is burned down and a Puerto Rican man has been missing for days. The cloistered town is seemingly separated from real life atrocities, however the book reflects national injustices.

Lamar Kerry is "The Ordinary White Boy," a slacking 28-year-old journalist working for his father's newspaper in town. Kerry fears responsibility, growing up and becoming a small town wrestler with life's greater matches. His solution is to remain neutral and ordinary. However, he is assigned to report on the recent violence and he comes to realize that being "ordinary" is the disease of apathy.

Conquering his fears, Lamar then puts himself right in the middle of the ring for he knows that innocence cannot protect a person, to Kerry, innocence is meaningless.

Using small town America as a metaphor for all the people that section themselves off from real life problems, they become the ordinary white folk. America may be moving "hopelessly," but Kerry indicates that people cannot give up on cases because they are deemed hopeless. Generational cover-ups and perpetual stalemates on racial issues are not reasons to abandon another attempt. Kerry insists that everyone must try to put himself in the middle of something.

Clarke's language of telling truths is eloquent. The descriptions in his imagery are as colorful as the races of his characters. A dying mother's skin is battleship gray, her eyes pink like calamine lotion ö Clarke's writing is tangible with the color of emotion. The main character, annoying at first, is only exasperating because he is an antique hand mirror that we have broken and hid in our bottom drawer. We have accepted the bad luck and by doing so, have refused to replace an honorable reflection of ourselves.

"The Ordinary White Boy" addresses the problems of race to a country that feels comforted by its ignorance. Clarke's account is brutal and honest, making it impossible to put the book down guilt free as when you picked it up.

Even the socially aware will encounter evils that are rooted in our deepest ideology, but have been masked. In the drought of American equality, Kerry searches for change, in the forethought that change exists.