James

by Percival Everett

The worst part was that the judge told the grand jury that it was an act of a multitude and so they couldn’t recommend any indictments. So, if enough people do it, it’s not a crime.”

At that moment the power of reading made itself clear and real to me. If I could see the words, then no one could control them or what I got from them. They couldn’t even know if I was merely seeing them or reading them, sounding them out or comprehending them. It was a completely private affair and completely free and, therefore, completely subversive.

After being cruel, the most notable white attribute was gullibility.

“Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.”

“What would they have done to you if they had figured out that you were exactly what you were pretending to be?”

The town looked like it might be called Bluebird. It was well populated with complacent-looking, nicely dressed white people, the scariest kind.

“I thought about tearing out his songs and burning them, but they would still exist. Those crackers would still sing them. Better to know they exist. Don’t you think?”

though they could never identify him as black, they would see him as something worse, a very poor white person.

I hated the world that wouldn’t let me apply justice without the certain retaliation of injustice.

I had never seen a white man filled with such fear. The remarkable truth, however, was that it was not the pistol, but my language, the fact that I didn’t conform to his expectations, that I could read, that had so disturbed and frightened him.