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. There were even laws in place that forbade the intermarrying of the two races. Busses, Restaurants, and other public places had strict segregation policies that forbade Blacks from intermingling with Whites.

In reaction to this several colleges were established for African Americans. Things in the South were so bad that many colleges protested when Blacks were allowed to attend University. 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. But in the period of the novel, he would have merely been in following the perceived social norm. 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. Mosley was merely returning the hatred directed at him and his kind. “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. To call him a racist is to call a man who killed in self-defense a murderer. His negative attitude towards Caucasians is a reaction to their disdain. If Mosley sounded like a racist against Whites it is only because he was the victim of severe discrimination.

In other words, the Black man or the African-American was still a downtrodden individual. had not yet begun his civil rights movement for equality. Less than 100 years ago the grandparents of the African Americans were still toiling away enslaved to the white man. However, back home in America Racism was still in full swing. Black and White soldiers now fought together in the same unit instead of Blacks being segregated into separate units. It is worth pointing out that in the novel, World War II has just been concluded, the post-war boom is about to end. “Because I was used to white people by 1948” is a statement he made at the very beginning of the book. All for his association with a Black woman. 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. She was a Mulatto with African-American ancestors.

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.

Mosley devil in a blue dress