The Colored Kid — Thomas William Simpson

Danny and Will run into each other at the local gin mill one night by chance. They haven't seen one another for over twenty years, since their days as high school classmates. They have a few beers together, reminisce.Danny tells Will he has some excellent weed back at his place, would Will like to partake? Will hesitates, but accepts the invitation.They drive to a large brick mansion at the end of a long dark driveway.Danny gives Will a tour. And in one of the upstairs bedrooms, Danny shoves Will into a walk-in closet, slams the door, and throws the dead bolt.So begins The Colored Kid, an allegory for four hundred years of racial tension between the Europeans who settled in North America and the Africans they dragged here in chains.Will's a privileged white kid from the burbs. Danny's a biracial kid (white mother, black father) who moves to town in the sixth grade. Tensions exist between them from the get-go. There will be hell to pay before it's all over.The truth, as you will see, is a hard case. A tough nut to crack. Especially when history, ego, machismo, and most of all race are all at work inside that walk-in closet.Race relations- America's thorniest, and most explosive, social dilemma.The Colored Kid, using a very unique narrative construct, confronts our national disgrace head on.