Family lore has it that from ages one to four, he'd tied my right hand behind my back so I'd grow up to be left-handed, right-brained, and well-centered. I was eight when my father wanted to test the "bystander effect" as it applies to the "black community." He replicated the infamous Kitty Genovese case with a prepubescent me standing in for the ill-fated Ms. Genovese, who, in 1964, was robbed, raped, and stabbed to death in the apathetic streets of New York, her plaintive Psychology 101 textbook cries for help ignored by dozens of onlookers and neighborhood residents. Hence, the "bystander effect": the more people around to provide help, the less likely one is to receive help. Dad hypothesized that this didn't apply to black people, a loving race whose very survival has been dependent on helping one another in times of need. So he made me stand on the busiest intersection in the neighborhood, dollar bills bursting from my pockets, the latest and shiniest electronic gadgetry jammed into my ear canals, a hip-hop heavy gold chain hanging from my neck, and, inexplicably, a set of custom-made carpeted Honda Civic floor mats draped over my forearm like a waiter's towel, and as tears streamed from my eyes, my own father mugged me. He beat me down in front of a throng of bystanders, who didn't stand by for long. The mugging wasn't two punches to the face old when the people came, not to my aid, but to my father's. Assisting him in my ass kicking, they happily joined in with flying elbows and television wrestling throws. One woman put me in a well-executed and, in retrospect, merciful, rear-naked chokehold. When I regained consciousness to see my father surveying her and the rest of my attackers, their faces still sweaty and chests still heaving from the efforts of their altruism, I imagined that, like mine, their ears were still ringing with my high-pitched screams and their frenzied laughter.

"How satisfied were you with your act of selflessness?"

Not at all Somewhat satisfied Very satisfied

1 2 3 4 5

On the way home, Pops put a consoling arm around my aching shoulders and delivered an apologetic lecture about his failure to take into account the "bandwagon effect."

Then there was the time he wanted to test "Servility and Obedience in the Hip-hop Generation." I must've been about ten when my father sat me down in front of a mirror, pulled a Ronald Reagan Halloween mask over his head, pinned a defunct pair of Trans World Airlines captain wings to his lab coat, and proclaimed himself a "white authority figure." "The nigger in the mirror is a stupid nigger," he explained to me in that screechy, cloying "white voice" comedians of color use, while attaching a set of electrodes to my temples. The wires led to a sinister-looking console filled with buttons, dials, and old-fashioned voltage gauges.

"You will ask the boy in the mirror a series of questions about his supposed nigger history from the sheet on the table. If he gets the question wrong or fails to answer in ten seconds, you will press the red button, delivering an electric shock that will increase in intensity with each wrong answer."

I knew better than to beg for mercy, for mercy would be a rant about getting what I deserved for reading the one comic book I ever owned. Batman #203, Spectacular Secrets of the Batcave Revealed, a moldy, dog-eared back issue someone had thrown into the farmyard and I brought inside and nursed back to readability like a wounded piece of literature. It was the first thing I had ever read from the outside world, and when I whipped it out during a break in my homeschooling, my father confiscated it. From then on, whenever I didn't know something or had a bad day in the neighborhood, he'd wave the comic's half-torn cover in my face. "See, if you weren't wasting your life reading this bullshit, you'd realize Batman ain't coming to save your ass or your people!"

I read the first question.

Excerpted from The Sellout by Paul Beatty. Copyright © 2015 by Paul Beatty. Excerpted by permission of Picador. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.