Real Life

by Brandon Taylor

The most unfair part of it, Wallace thinks, is that when you tell white people that something is racist, they hold it up to the light and try to discern if you are telling the truth. As if they can tell by the grain if something is racist or not, and they always trust their own judgment. It’s unfair because white people have a vested interest in underestimating racism, its amount, its intensity, its shape, its effects. They are the fox in the henhouse.

They are always laughing. This is it, Wallace thinks. That’s how they get by. Silence and laughter, silence and laughter, switch and swing. The way one glides through this life without having to think about anything hard.

There will always be good white people who love him and want the best for him but who are more afraid of other white people than of letting him down.