When he returned he looked burdened, and without introducing the topic in any formal way, he began to talk to us about the inside, about how you found, when you were inside, that it wasn't like the neighborhood, no, not at all, it was very different, because when you were inside everybody understood that people had better keep to their own kind, and that's how it was, "like stayed with like," there was hardly any mixing, not like up at the flats, and it wasn't the guards or anyone telling you to do it, that's just the way it was, tribes stick together, and it even goes by shade, he explained, pulling up his sleeve and pointing at his arm, so all of us that was dark like me, well, we're over here, tight with each other, always-he drew a line on the Formica tabletop-and brown like you two is somewhere over here, and Paki is somewhere else, and Indian is somewhere else. White is split, too: Irish, Scottish, English. And in the English some of them are BNP and some are all right. Everybody goes with their own is the point, and it's natural. Makes you think. We sat slurping our milkshakes, thinking. And
( Zadie Smith )
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