Pompey gave them a blueprint for colored folk. How they acted. How they pleased white folks. How eager they would be for a piece of the dream that they would do anything for massa. She hated her place in their world, where she fell in their order of things, and blamed Pompey, her shucking shadow in the office. She could not see him anymore than anyone else in the office saw him. Her hatred. Fulton’s hatred of himself and his lie of whiteness. White people’s reality is built on what things appear to be—that’s the business of Empiricism. They judge them on how they appear when held up to the
...more
