James

by Percival Everett

“It’s a horrible world. White people try to tell us that everything will be just fine when we go to heaven. My question is, Will they be there? If so, I might make other arrangements.” Easter laughed.

There we were, twelve of us, marching down the main street that separated the free side of town from the slave side, ten white men in blackface, one black man passing for white and painted black, and me, a light-brown black man painted black in such a way as to appear like a white man trying to pass for black. The storefronts, a

“I just couldn’t stay there. It was too much. Do you know what it’s like to pass for white.” I cocked my head. “As a matter of fact, just recently I passed for white so I could pass for black.” “Exhausting, isn’t it?”

imagined Norman’s face. I recalled his expression as he went down the last time I saw him, a mixture of complaint, fear, confusion and anger. In other words, in that moment, he looked like a slave.

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