Crosses

Crosses are the dominant group in the novel’s racial order, yet the category encompasses both defenders of integration and people who reinforce racial exclusion. Through school protests, media coverage, administrative rules, family conflict, and political rhetoric, the novel shows Cross identity operating not merely as personal status but as power embedded in institutions and everyday expectations.

Social Position and Political Divisions

Crosses hold the dominant position in a society marked by the historical subordination of Noughts. That inherited hierarchy informs how Cross characters describe Noughts and what they consider acceptable: one Cross dissident group understands the past as a source of prejudice that must be overcome, while a senior political figure invokes it to justify exclusion. The contrast makes clear that belonging to the privileged group does not require every member to share the same beliefs, but it does shape the structures within which their choices matter.

A Cross student who joins a dissident group commits to advancing genuine integration between Noughts and Crosses, now and in the future. The group’s members believe change will require replacing the assumptions held by older generations. Their work remains discreet, however, and the student recognizes that private opposition is not the same as publicly challenging prejudice. The group provides a purpose and a focus at school, while its quiet methods also reveal how fear can leave injustice unopposed in public.

Schools, Public Order, and Institutional Power

The admission of Nought students to Heathcroft brings the racial hierarchy into the schoolyard. A hostile Cross crowd gathers outside the school, chanting against Nought pupils as police try both to reach the entrance and to control the crowd. The protest makes exclusion visible as collective action, rather than a matter of isolated personal dislike; the presence of police does not ensure that students are protected from harassment.

Media coverage further shapes what the public can see. A report describes the admitted students as meeting with hostility, but omits the police failure to shield them from the crowd and the harassment they endure. The difference between the event and its softened broadcast account shows how institutional narration can make discrimination appear less severe than the people targeted experience it.

The dispute also reaches school leadership. Mrs Paxton warns that Nought pupils are repeatedly picked on and that one may retaliate; Mr Costa responds that Noughts who find the school difficult could go elsewhere. His answer turns a question of protection into a question of whether the targeted pupils belong at all. Cross authority within the school thus sustains exclusion even when the immediate problem is harassment by others.

Rules, Family, and Unequal Consequences

Administrative procedures extend the hierarchy into healthcare. At a hospital, Nurse Carter explains that patient identification cards must be checked and registered before medical care can be given, under a new government ruling. The exchange presents surveillance and registration as routine procedure, while placing that procedure within a society where public institutions already distinguish between racial groups.

Cross privilege does not erase power imbalances within Cross families. When a daughter is accused of damaging her family’s public standing through her association with a Nought, her mother blames that association and invokes the expectation that contact with Noughts brings trouble. The exchange shows racial prejudice passing through the language of family reputation, as though social exclusion were simply a practical consequence to be accepted.

A father’s response to his daughter’s pregnancy makes that domestic authority explicit. After she says the pregnancy followed a mutually loving relationship with Callum, he rejects her as his daughter and orders her to have an abortion, framing her decision as an embarrassment to him. His status as a Cross does not shield her from patriarchal control; rather, his family and social authority become means of imposing it.

Violence, Intimacy, and the Limits of Privilege

The novel also shows Cross characters acting against the hierarchy through personal choices. During an assault by other Cross students, one girl refuses to accept their denigration of Noughts and fights back after being slapped. Her resistance is immediate and individual, not a resolution of the larger system, but it shows that Cross identity does not predetermine agreement with racist beliefs.

The relationship between a Cross girl and Callum crosses the boundary enforced by the social order. When Callum brings four Noughts with him to meet her, she runs away from the group. Later, she and Callum express their love and intimacy while held captive together. These moments place affection and fear alongside the danger created by a society that treats Nought–Cross closeness as a source of trouble.

Cross power is especially stark when political rhetoric casts Noughts as a threat. In a broadcast, a prominent Cross politician describes migration as a flood, links Noughts to crime and competition for housing, and promises government action to stop them. The speech turns racial hierarchy into a public argument for exclusion, using claims about resources and public concern to make discrimination sound like responsible policy.

The contrast between that rhetoric and the dissident group’s commitment to integration is central to the novel’s treatment of Crosses. The group recognizes that prejudice is not only a matter of individual conviction: institutions, public accounts, family expectations, and political language can reproduce the hierarchy. Cross identity therefore marks access to power, but the novel measures characters by how they use, defend, or challenge that power.