The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

“If Jean Valjean had me representing him,” he likes to say, “then Les Misérables would’ve only been six pages long. Dismissed—Loaf of Bread Pilfery.”

“I said, ‘Brother, you have to ask yourself two questions, Who am I? And how may I become myself?’ That’s basic person-centered therapeutics. You want the client to feel important, to feel that he or she is in control of the healing process. Remember that shit.”

I speak only of that most basic of needs, the child’s need to please the father. Many fathers foster that need in their children through a wanton manipulation that starts in infancy.

you come to realize that the frozen niceties and trips to the drive-thru car wash were bait-and-switch parenting. Ploys and cover-ups for their reduced sex drives, stagnant take-home pay, and their own inabilities to live up to their father’s expectations.

He said that the vast majority of slave revolts took place on Wednesdays because traditionally Thursday was whippin’ day.

That’s the problem with history, we like to think it’s a book—that we can turn the page and move the fuck on. But history isn’t the paper it’s printed on. It’s memory, and memory is time, emotions, and song. History is the things that stay with you.

The pneumatic doors swung open with that strong, hissing efficiency that I love, and the driver welcomed me aboard with a friendly “Hurry up, motherfucker, you letting the stink in.”

Shame because L.A. is about space, and here one’s self-worth comes from how one chooses to navigate that space. Walking is akin to begging in the streets. Taxicabs are for foreigners and prostitutes. Bicycles, skateboards, and Rollerblades are for health nuts and kids, people with nowhere to go. And all cars, from the luxury import to the classified-ad jalopy, are status symbols, because no matter how shoddy the upholstery, how bouncy the ride, how fucked-up the paint job, the car, any car, is better than riding the bus.

For black people “too many Mexicans” is the excuse we, the historically most documented workers in history, give ourselves for attending racist rallies protesting the undocumented workers seeking better living conditions. “Too many Mexicans” is an oral rationalization to remain stuck in our ways.

Too many Mexicans. It’s a bromide for every unlicensed contractor tired of being underbid and refusing to blame their lack of employment on shoddy workmanship, nepotistic hiring practices, and a long list of shitty online references. Mexicans are to blame for everything.

Regardless of your income level, the old adage of having to be twice as good as the white man, half as good as the Chinese guy, and four times as good as the last Negro the supervisor hired before you still holds true. Nevertheless,

“This is the very bus from which Hominy Jenkins, the last Little Rascal, asserted that the rights of African-Americans were neither God-given nor constitutional, but immaterial.”

Because she knew that even in these times of racial equality, when someone whiter than us, richer than us, blacker than us, Chineser than us, better than us, whatever than us, comes around throwing their equality in our faces, it brings out our need to impress, to behave, to tuck in our shirts, do our homework, show up on time, make our free throws, teach, and prove our self-worth in hopes that we won’t be fired, arrested, or trucked away and shot.

Who was I kidding? I’m a farmer, and farmers are natural segregationists.

I’m a farmer: we segregate in an effort to give every tree, every plant, every poor Mexican, every poor nigger, a chance for equal access to sunlight and water; we make sure every living organism has room to breathe.

“Come on, he cares about black people like a seven-footer cares about basketball. He has to care because what else would he be good at.”

“The customers love it. It’s like they belong to a private club that’s public!”

Weary and stuffed from being force-fed the falsehood that when one of your kind makes it, it means that you’ve all made it.

I didn’t solve the racial and class inequalities in health care, but I’m told patients who travel down the brown-black road are more proactive. That when their names are finally called, the first thing they say to the attending physician is “Doctor, before you treat me, I need to know one thing. Do you give a fuck about me? I mean, do you really give a fuck?”

Hominy says it’s why they rarely shoot black and white buddy movies anymore; the bigger stars get washed out. Tony Curtis. Nick Nolte. Ethan Hawke does a film with some African-American and it becomes a screen test to see who’s really the Invisible Man.

For Hominy blackface isn’t racism. It’s just common sense. Black skin looks better. Looks healthier. Looks prettier. Looks powerful. It’s why bodybuilders and international Latin dance contestants blacken themselves up. Why Berliners, New Yorkers, and businessmen, Nazis, cops, scuba divers, Panthers, bad guys, and Kabuki stagehands wear black.

Silence can be either protest or consent, but most times it’s fear.