The Sellout

the key to doing boring tasks is to think about not so much what you’re doing but the importance of why you’re doing it.

‘I’m so fucking tired of black women always being described by their skin tones! Honey-colored this! Dark-chocolate that! My paternal grandmother was mocha-tinged, café-au-lait, graham-fucking-cracker brown! How come they never describe the white characters in relation to foodstuffs and hot liquids? Why aren’t there any yogurt-colored, egg-shell-toned, string-cheese-skinned, low-fat-milk white protagonists

sharing the same brain but not the same thought process.

I understand now that the only time black people don’t feel guilty is when we’ve actually done something wrong, because that relieves us of the cognitive dissonance of being black and innocent, and in a way the prospect of going to jail becomes a relief. In the way that cooning is a relief, voting Republican is a relief, marrying white is a relief—albeit a temporary one.

okum: An Anthology of Afri

Unum corpus, una mens, una cor, unum amor.

One body, one mind, one heart, one love

and if Disneyland was indeed the Happiest Place on Earth, you’d either keep it a secret or the price of admission would be free and not equivalent to the yearly per capita income of a small sub-Saharan African nation like Detroit

I’d rather be judged by twelve than carried by six

“That big motherfucker play any football?”
“A little running back in high school.”
“MOИ TpycИКИ MOКpЬIe,” she said in lip-licking Russian.

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