The Sellout

by Paul Beatty

Work keys jangling like sleigh bells, the Court officers march into the chambers like a two-by-two wagonless team of crew-cut Clydesdales harnessed together by a love of God and country.

When the fruit was dry as a desert bone, he walked up to me, tapped my chest with the tip of Lulu Belle’s barrel, and said, “Shit, if I could get some of this pineapple every morning, I’d fuck the nigger, too.”

“They are in non-ironic blackface,” he said defiantly. “That’s not cool.”

“You know the only place where there’s no racism?” She looked around to make sure her sorority sisters weren’t within earshot and whispered, “Remember those photos of the black president and his family walking across the White House lawn arm-in-arm. Within those fucking frames at that instant, and in only that instant, there’s no fucking racism.”