It could have been my turn to experience a bit of guilt, having toyed with the boy's feelings, and he being too young to actually understand the prob… - Percival Everett

When you are a slave, you claim choice where you can.

Why did God set it up like this?” Rachel asked. “With them as masters and us as slaves?” “There is no God, child. There’s religion but there’s no God of theirs. Their religion tells that we will get our reward in the end. However, it apparently doesn’t say anything about their punishment. But when we’re around them, we believe in God. Oh, Lawdy Lawd, we’s be believin’. Religion is just a controlling tool they employ and adhere to when convenient.” “There must be something,” Virgil said. “I’m sorry, Virgil. You might be right. There might be some higher power, children, but it’s not their white God. However, the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel.” The children said together, “And the better they feel, the safer we are.

Huck nodded. “You know where we goin’?” the boy asked. “Ain’t got no idee. But we’s on our way.” —

There are two ways to approach the race thing. One is the unfortunate marginalization of American writers who happen to be black by calling them “black writers,” which tacitly acknowledges the existence of something else that would be mainstream, and so ghettoizes the work immediately. That is the unfortunate part. If one allows that, one fails to acknowledge the truth that there is no such thing as a “black American experience”…