Bluebird, Bluebird (Highway 59, #1)

by Attica Locke

In the wake of Obama, America had told on itself.

For William, the Ranger, the law would save us by protecting us—by prosecuting crimes against us as zealously as it prosecutes crimes against whites. No, Clayton, the defense lawyer, said: the law is a lie black folks need protection from—a set of rules that were written against us from the time ink was first set to parchment.

Wally’s and Keith’s lives revolved around the black folks they claimed to hate but couldn’t leave alone. It was, as his uncle Clayton would say, an obsession that weakened them, that enraged and eventually enslaved them within their own hearts, Darren thought.