“I got it,” he said. The guy in the otherwise empty classroom snapped his dark brown fingers like he was Einstein, having finally pieced together the proper equation with an E and an M and a C in it. “You’re c-c-c-culturally black.” He leaned back into his chair, crossing his arms and nodding approval at his own ability to maintain an insane worldview in which white people simply had to be more privileged than minorities, even if that meant turning me into one—despite my pale skin and a set of baby-blues that would get a nod from Sinatra.
Tyrone was a black guy seven years my junior. He had a stutter like a faulty version of one of those heart-shaped quarter beds in stuffy velvet wrapped honeymoon suites. He was veteran, having been some non-deployable MOS in the Air Force that allowed him to do a four-year stint basically in the backyard of the town in which he had grown up, where he happened to have been raised by a white lady who adopted him, who happened to be an unmarried psychologist—hence the major we both shared.
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