Bronx Masquerade and African American Stereotypes

I enjoyed my group's book talk for Bronx Masquerade.  I was able to share my question with my group and hear their opinions on the question I raised.  This question was,  "why does Tyrone express feelings of understanding and acceptance of others differences, but still seems to stereotype his peers?" My group members agreed that Tyrone seemed to stereotype others and we were not sure if this was the purpose of the author or not. I thought Kat's insight into the book was nice to hear as well.  Even though I had considered the stereotypes in the book, I hadn't considered every role the characters had (like the teen mother, basketball player, rapper...) as being stereotypical like she pointed out. I also thought the discussion we had about language was interesting.  I had not thought about that before class either.  I see both sides of the discussion. On one hand I would think the language the students used would have been much more vulgar and profane.  But the book is often used in schools and may not have been published with different language.  I still really enjoyed Bronx Masquerade, but like each of the other books we have discussed it has its flaws.  This book can still be used to discuss diversity as long as discussion intervenes with the reading of the book in a classroom.