The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

“Do you know that the average household net worth for whites is $113,149 per year, Hispanics $6,325, and black folks $5,677?” “For real?” “What’s your source material, nigger?” “The Pew Research Center.” Motherfuckers from Harvard to Harlem respect the Pew Research Center, and hearing this, the concerned patrons turned around in their squeaky plastic seats as best they could, given that donut shop swivel chairs swivel only six degrees in either direction. Pops politely asked the manager to dim the lights. I switched on the overhead projector, slid a transparency over the glass, and together we craned our necks toward the ceiling, where a bar graph titled “Income Disparity as Determined by Race” hovered overhead like some dark, damning, statistical cumulonimbus cloud threatening to rain on our collective parades.