The Sellout: Prologue Summary & Analysis

The narrator says that it although it may be hard to believe because he is a black man, he has never stolen, cheated, robbed a house, held up a liquor store, or “pulled out my gigantic penis” and masturbated in public. Nonetheless, he now finds himself inside the Supreme Court, his car left illegally parked on Constitution Avenue. The narrator is here because he received a letter telling him that his case had been selected to be heard by the Supreme Court, signed by “the People of the United States of America.” Yesterday he walked through Washington, DC, visiting the Lincoln Memorial and wondering what the statue would do if it were to come to life now.

The narrator also visits the Pentagon and the national Mall, where he sees a white boy lying on the ground in such a position that it makes it look like the Washington Monument is his penis. He goes to the zoo, where a woman and her boyfriend comment that the gorilla, who is called Baraka, is “presidential.” The woman starts crying and claims that some of her best friends are monkeys, which makes the narrator laugh. His walk through DC taught him that in contemporary America, just as in Ancient Rome, “you’re either citizen or slave… guilty or innocent.”

Back in the Supreme Court, an officer tries to get the narrator to sit up straight in his chair, but instead he comes crashing to the floor. The narrator is wearing a suit for the first time, which he thinks makes him look like a criminal. When the narrator first arrived at the Supreme Court, this officer searched him with a dog while they both stood under a sign reading “EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW.” Now the narrator figures that the crime he has been charged with is so awful that no one will bother to prosecute him for marijuana possession, so he cleans and fills his pipe. The officer lights it for him and he blows a huge cloud of smoke in the air.

The narrator’s case is “the latest in the long line of landmark race-related cases,” including Dred Scott v. Sanford, which ruled that the descendants of slaves could not be United States citizens, and Plessy v. Ferguson, which upheld racial segregation. Feeling high, the narrator shouts “Equal Justice Under the Law!” He thinks about the fact that people have died for this goal of equal justice, and that most of them—whether innocent or guilty—have never made it inside the actual Supreme Court building. He thinks that the sign declaring EQUAL JUSTICE UNDER THE LAW above the Supreme Court indicates insecurity.

When the narrator was younger, he believed that the problems of the black American community would be solved if only the community had a good enough motto. He reasons that other communities have mottos, from the Chickasaw nation to the police force. As a child, the narrator attempted to use his knowledge of Latin in order to invent a motto for black people. His first ideas was “Black America: Veni, vidi, vici—Fried Chicken!” followed by “Semper Fi, Semper Funky,” and then “Unum corpus, una mens, una cor, unum amor,” which means “One body, one mind, one heart, one love.”

At first the narrator was pleased with this last attempt, but then remembered that the black community objects to being thought of as a monolith. He says that, secretly, “every black person thinks they’re better than every other black person.” Now the narrator isn’t sure if the community needs a motto, though he thinks that it would be smart to make money offering to translate individual people’s mottos in Latin for them. He could set up shop at a tattoo parlor so his customers could immediately get their new motto tattooed on them. The narrator translates phrases like “strickly dickly” and “you snooze, you lose” into Latin in his head.

The narrator’s lawyer, Hampton Fiske, takes his pipe from his hands and sprays some air freshener to cover the smell of pot. The narrator is too high to greet Hampton verbally, so he just nods. Hampton is “an old-school criminal defense attorney” who prefers to represent only the most desperate people, those he calls “the wretched of the Earth.” When the crimes of which the narrator was accused were first read aloud in district court, he struggled to understand why he couldn’t be considered both guilty and innocent. Eventually, he pleaded “human,” and Hampton quickly asked that the trial be heard in the Supreme Court.

Back in DC, a black woman in the front row of the Court berates the narrator while she discusses the history of black people in America. Then she slaps him in the face. The narrator knows that she wants him to feel guilty, and he keeps expecting a feeling of “black guilt” to descend on him, but instead nothing comes. He is shocked to feel no guilt for the first time in his life. He makes one last attempt to access guilt by closing his eyes and picturing the Civil Rights movement. However, the images in his head become distorted, transforming into a mix between a zombie movie and Coke advert.

The Supreme Court justices enter, and Hampton drags the narrator to his feet. The black Justice is “absentmindedly” wearing a $50,000 Rolex watch. The narrator feels that at this point he is unsure whether he is the plaintiff or the defendant. His case is named “Me v. the United States of America.” The narrator’s family name was originally Mee, but his father decided to change it to Me. While Hampton speaks, the black Justice fidgets uncomfortably in his seat. Eventually, he cannot help but blurt out: “Nigger, are you crazy?” He asks how it’s possible that a black man in today’s world can own a slave.

The black Justice “believes in the system” and therefore is horrified. The Justice wants to believe in progress, but the narrator himself rejects this, thinking: “Since when did a little slavery and segregation hurt anybody.” The narrator is very high, and accidentally says “… so fucking be it” out loud. The black Justice stands up, looking like he wants to fight. He shouts that the narrator’s parents must have raised him better than to embrace segregation and slavery. He shouts: “let’s get this hanging party started!”