“For a while, even racists realized that it was not a good thing to be seen as one,” Percival Everett tells me. “But racism has its swagger back. White supremacists are enjoying their day. I don’t know how anyone can miss Elon Musk’s hail-to-the-Führer salute that he does all the time.”
Everett is not a naturally gloomy commentator but, on racial matters, with Donald Trump in power, he says it’s a case of “one step forward, two steps back”. He has spent decades chewing on America’s racial problem and the legacy of slavery. He has then turned that into novels. Very funny ones. The 68-year-old, who has more than 30 books under his belt, writes with a raised eyebrow, rather than the raised voice of the megaphoning activist.
