Within the first few paragraphs of We Cast a Shadow, the narrator refers to a Black colleague as “too Black to be pretty” (4). This bald-faced remark finds emphasis in the fact that the narrator himself is Black. His distaste for those who share his looks or racial identity becomes a running theme throughout the novel. The narrator hates being Black, and he dislikes Blackness in other people. When he encounters other Black people, he habitually passes judgement on the darkness of their skin or the style of their clothes, looking down on people like Etherine and Supercargo for not conforming to his own standard of a “respectable” Black person. To the narrator, respectability means downplaying one’s Blackness as much as possible. He makes no effort to involve himself in any kind of Black community, keeping his distance from the majority-Black housing development where he grew up and choosing instead to be the only nonwhite resident of a gentrified neighborhood.

While the narrator’s attitude seems contradictory, it is the direct result of his indoctrination in a society where Blackness is framed as dangerous and disgusting. Since his childhood, he has seen his Black peers and family members treated like threats—arrested, beaten, and shot for the smallest transgressions against the white majority.