diff --git a/linkcheck/fileutil.py b/linkcheck/fileutil.py
index b461e936..660c0018 100644
--- a/linkcheck/fileutil.py
+++ b/linkcheck/fileutil.py
@@ -25,6 +25,7 @@ import fnmatch
 import tempfile
 import importlib
 from distutils.spawn import find_executable
+from builtins import str as str_text
 
 from .decorators import memoized
 
@@ -166,7 +167,7 @@ else:
 
 def pathencode (path):
     """Encode a path string with the platform file system encoding."""
-    if isinstance(path, unicode) and not os.path.supports_unicode_filenames:
+    if isinstance(path, str_text) and not os.path.supports_unicode_filenames:
         path = path.encode(FSCODING, "replace")
     return path