From "The Elevator Ride," by Nathan McCall, part of his new book of personal essays, What's Going On. Writing in the second person, McCall describes an encounter in an elevator between a black man—presumably himself—and a white woman who suffers from fear and "racial suspicion":

She suspects what you want.... She seems filled with the wildly absurd terror that, in the brief ride between the 12th and 1st floors, this black man may rape her, rob her, and leave her for dead.... Can't she tell from your bearing that you're no rapist or thief?
[Emphasis in original.]

On the first page of his previously published memoir, Makes Me Wanna Holler: A Young Black Man in America, McCall describes another of his racial encounters:

We all took off after him... Stomped him and kicked him... kicked him in the head and face and watched the blood gush from his mouth... kicked him in the stomach and nuts, where I knew it would hurt.... Every time I drove my foot into his balls, I felt better.... We bloodied him so badly.... We walked away, laughing, boasting.... F***ing up white boys like that made us feel good inside.

In addition to its displays of McCall's unreconstructed racism, the book also contains candid descriptions of his participation in numerous felonies: assault and battery, breaking and entering, assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, rape, and attempted murder. McCall spent very little time in prison for these crimes, but instead went to a state university, then on to a career in journalism that eventually landed him on the Metro desk of the Washington Post. It's quite possible the nervous woman in the elevator simply read McCall's book and recognized his face from the cover.

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