Description of ‘Devil in a Blue dress’
The Whydoneit book Devil in a Blue dress was a stark commentary on racism and its effects on the African-American community in the U.S. after World War Two. It follows the career of Walter Mosley an out-of-work ex-machinist. He is offered a job as an investigator to find Daphne Monet, a white woman who has taken to hiding in the Black community. Mosley has no training or experience as a private investigator but since he has no job and he is unlikely to find one given all the discrimination he suffers he takes the job. Throughout the novel, he descends a dark path of deceit and discrimination that emphasizes the dark world he lived in one that is fraught with racism that thankfully is less severe than what it is today. This paper will focus on the question of Walter Mosley’s racism.
In the book’s ending, it is discovered that Daphne Monet is important to the two political parties seeking her because she is not a White Woman at all. She was a Mulatto with African-American ancestors. If this was made public then her being a fiancée of one of the candidates for election would eliminate all his chances of getting elected. All for his association with a Black woman.
“Because I was used to white people by 1948” is a statement he made at the very beginning of the book. It is worth pointing out that in the novel, World War II has just been concluded, the post-war boom is about to end. Black and White soldiers now fought together in the same unit instead of Blacks being segregated into separate units. However, back home in America Racism was still in full swing. Less than 100 years ago the grandparents of the African Americans were still toiling away enslaved to the white man. Martin Luther King jr. had not yet begun his civil rights movement for equality. In other words, the Black man or the African-American was still a downtrodden individual. If Mosley sounded like a racist against Whites it is only because he was the victim of severe discrimination. His negative attitude towards Caucasians is a reaction to their disdain. To call him a racist is to call a man who killed in self-defense a murderer.
“I hate white people, and colored people too, for making me that way” and I decided to milk all those white people for all the money they’d let go of” as mentioned earlier. Mosley was merely returning the hatred directed at him and his kind. If a White person has said these things replacing white for colored and colored with White today he would be branded as an abject racist. But in the period of the novel, he would have merely been in following the perceived social norm. A White person who did not utter such derogatory remarks against Blacks in the Southern states would be a charitable person and an advocate of equality such was the perfidy of those times. Things in the South were so bad that many colleges protested when Blacks were allowed to attend University. In reaction to this several colleges were established for African Americans. Busses, Restaurants, and other public places had strict segregation policies that forbade Blacks from intermingling with Whites. There were even laws in place that forbade the intermarrying of the two races. Such was the bias of those times that it was all the could be expected that the Blacks would return the White’s hatred with the same venom.
Conclusion
Of course, justifying Easy Rowlins does little to hide his biased attitude. A racist who is a racist in response to the other group’s racism is still a racist. Just like a person who kills another in self-defense still committed homicide. If viewed from an absolutist or external perspective, independent of his surroundings, Then Easy Rowlins was a racist who harbored biases that would make a harmonious relationship with the other racial group difficult. However, when taken into the context of being heavily discriminated against and with White’s racist attitudes against him his own then he is not a racist. Rather he is a victim of racism.