Colson Whitehead, Again and for the First Time. Part 2

More of my notes on Colson Whitehead's  Apex Hides the Hurt (2006; Anchor Books, 2007).  Along with the marketing issues, Whitehead addresses race.  Nothing new there but this how he does so, in part, in Apex:

There was always that kindling problem of being black in America - namely, how to avoid becoming it.

p. 145

***

The sliver of himself still in tune with marketing shivered each time Gertrude used the word colored. He kept stubbing on it. As it were. Colored, Negro, Afro-American, African American. She was a few iterations behind the times. Not that you could keep up, anyway. Every couple of years someone came up with something that got us closer to the truth. Bit by bit we crept along. As if that thing we believed to be approaching actually existed.

…But there was a flipside of calling something by the name you gave it - and that was wanting to be called by the name that you gave yourself. What is the name that will give me the dignity and respect that is my right? The key that will unlock the world.

p. 192

And how we cannot all agree there is systemic racism?  

sch

2/16/20