Light in August is, without a doubt, a complicated novel with complicated characters. So far, we have only really gotten to know one of them: Joe Christmas, the racially ambiguous psychopath who makes us feel confused about race.
On one hand, Faulkner seems to want to use Christmas as a way of showing how silly it is to have a society that constructs identity based on race when race itself isn't necessarily black and white. Christmas doesn't fit in to either the black or white categories -- the white folk dismiss him once they find out he has "black blood" and the black folk think he's a white man, not to mention the fact that Christmas is completely opposed to the idea of being "black". So Faulkner goes about his merry way, showing the reader how much people jump to conclusions based on race and how wrong that is. Like when Joe Brown is telling the marshall about what happened to Mrs. Burden -- as soon as Brown mentions the fact that Christmas is biracial, the marshall immediately is assured that he is guilty, and us as the readers recognize that that's not a good thing.
But then, we find out that Christmas did kill Mrs. Burden (or at least it is heavily implied that he is the one who almost removes her head from her body), so we as readers ask ourselves, "What the heck is Faulkner trying to tell us here? That stereotypes are true? Is Faulkner just a really clever racist?"
I think the answer is not that Faulkner believes in violent stereotypes surrounding African-Americans -- rather, he is just trying to prove the true potential for harm these stereotypes carry. We met Christmas as a young boy, and we see that from the age of 5 he is ostracized because of his race. He is told that he is different, inferior, and should be ashamed. I think that a lot of his violent tendencies are a result of this attitude towards him. He is able to know both sides of the coin -- he sees how people begin to view and treat him differently when they find out he is not 100% white. And so, that night when he probably killed Mrs. Burden, Christmas was wandering around town, feeling out of place in both the white part of town and the black part of town, driving him insane. So insane that he (probably) kills Mrs. Burden.
So what I think Faulkner is trying to say is that racial stereotypes have a dangerous psychological effect on those they are assigned to. While stereotypes are not based in truth (for example, look at the black folk Christmas encounters on his journey through Freedman's Town -- they are calm, peaceful, and very human), they sometimes have the possibility of becoming true for some due to their unhealthy nature. I believe that that is what happened to Joe Christmas.
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