Jim Crow segregation—with its signage and cap-doffing rituals—was both policy and a kind of public theater. The arts tell us what is possible and what is not, because, among other things, they tell us who is human and who is not. All the Gold Dust Twins and Korn Kinks, all the Sambos and Niggerheads, all the spooks and coons, all the Uncle Bens and Aunt Jemimas, all the Nigger-Dies-First and Black-Bitch-Craves-Dick are, at their core, the founding myths of an empire.
