‘Willie and Highboy and me have backbone,’ said Portia angrily. ‘This here is a hard world and it seem to me us three struggles along pretty well.’
For a minute they were silent. Doctor Copeland laid his spectacles on the table and pressed his shrunken fingers to his eyeballs.
‘You all the time using that word--Negro,’ said Portia. ‘And that word haves a way of hurting people’s feelings. Even old plain nigger is better than that word. But polite peoples--no matter what shade they is--always says colored.’