In chapter eight, white teenage boys try to humiliate Easy and call him "nigger" and “black boy” (99). Mr. Albright, just like any white men in 1940’s who wanted to express racial dominance, calls Easy a “boy” (147). Also, because Mr. Albright hires Easy, he believes he owns him: “You take my money and you belong to me…We all owe out something, Easy. When you owe out then you're in debt and when you're in debt then you can't be your own man. That's capitalism” (147-148). Albright uses racial terms pretty easily, and because Easy happens to be a black man who needs the job he needs to deal with it. Expressions of racism in Devil in a Blue Dress go further than just a language. Another example for that is Mr. Carter’s attitude toward Easy. As Easy says, Mr. Carter shows "the worst kind of racism" by treating Easy like an equal (166). Mr. Carter, as Easy explains in the novel, does not recognize the racial difference between the two of them. Mr. Carter behaves as if Easy was less than a human being: “Mr. Todd Carter was so rich that he didn’t even consider me in human terms.” (166). Furthermore, all of the experiences that Easy happens to have with the police describe the relations between the upper and lower classes in 1948. The two policemen, Mason and Miller seem to get some kind of satisfaction from degrading lower class black men they arrest because it is their way of stating their racial dominance. In chapter twenty two, Easy states that the police do not care about the crime in the black neighborhood unless white people are the victims. He asserts: “The papers hardly ever even reported a colored murder. And when they did it was way in the back pages”, but “To kill a white man was a real crime” (208). In the novel Mosley illustrates the black and white reality of Los Angeles in 1940’s as defined by the government and the upper class whites. However, the author also uses the book to demonstrate that at the time there was a difference between a race and racism. An example for that are Easy's relations with his previous boss, Benito Giacomo. Benito is a first-generation Italian-American, and as Easy states he is “darker than many mulattos [he]’d know” (110). As Easy explains, Benny feels superior to him because for all purposes: ”Benny was a white man and I was a Negro”(110). Therefore, through Easy's interactions with Benny, Mosley suggests that race is not simply a matter of skin color.
Easy learns many lessons throughout the book. He talks about how "Jews back then understood the American Negro” since “in Europe the Jew had been a Negro for more than a thousand years”(185). Easy feels connected to the two Jews, Abe and Johnny because they as Holocaust survivors are probably even more familiar with racism than he is. Also, comparison of Jews and Negroes in the novel indicates how deep racial tensions were at the time.
Devil in a Blue Dress is a great novel, because it is much more than just a detective story. Easy's experiences and struggles throughout the book have a great meaning and at the same time give the reader an understanding of 1940’s Los Angeles, and the racism and prejudice that hang over the black community at the time. Mosley illustrates in the novel a racist society, with a privileged upper class on the top and determined to stay there.
Work Cited
Mosley, Walter. Devil in a Blue Dress. New York: Washington Square Press,1990. 45- 225.
