Faking it- Paula Bordera

Faking It- Paula Bordera

The novel Devil in a Blue Dress by Walter Mosley follows the journey of Easy Rawlins, a recently fired African American who moves to Los Angeles. Set in 1948, Mosley makes a conscious effort to show the racial barrier between the city’s black and white communities. By highlighting race differences and injustices in the novel, Mosley is able to reveal the struggle to commit to one own’s racial identity.

Right off the bat, Mosley introduces race specific places and behavior. The first scene of the novel takes place at Joppy’s bar. Mosley describes the bar as “a small bar on the second bar of a butcher's’ warehouse. His only usual customers were the Negro butchers” (Mosley, 47). This indicates that Joppy’s bar wasn’t multi-racial, but rather a strictly African American bar, which is why Easy Rawlins was surprised to see a white man, DeWitt Albright, walk into the bar. DeWitt Albright is looking for someone to hire to look for Daphne Monet, a white woman known for going into black bars. Albright needs Easy’s help because she is going into places where he is not allowed to enter. Albright is already out of place at Joppy’s bar. If he went into an all-black bar, Albright would stand out very much and his white racial identity would juxtapose with the African American atmosphere. Once again, Mosley uses this to stress the racial division in the novel. Just seeing Albright walk into Joppy’s causes Easy to become a bit anxious, as at the time blacks and whites were not in the same environment very frequently. “When he looked at me I felt a thrill of fear, but that went away quickly because I was used to white people by 1948” (Mosley, 1). When Easy distinguishes his race from Albright’s it automatically creates a racial barrier between them.

At first, Easy agrees to work for Albright and find Daphne. Albright will pay him good money, and if he had money, he could pay his mortgage and keep his house. However, as he is searching for Daphne, he realizes that it won’t be as easy as it seems. Here, we can see that Easy isn’t like the white, hard-boiled detective that we are used to. While the white detectives in other noir novels easily got the information they needed and moved around their city freely and quickly, Easy knew that at any moment, he could be arrested or blamed for a murder if the police found out what he was doing. He couldn’t look the least bit suspicious: “I had to keep telling myself to slow down. I knew that a patrol car would arrest any sprinting Negro they encountered” (Mosley, 122). While the cops would never faze the typical hard-boiled detective such as Sam Spade from The Maltese Falcon, Easy had entered a white man’s world by becoming an investigator, and race was not on his side, as his presence was not welcome in the white part of Los Angeles.

Easy understands the power dynamic between African Americans and whites, and he knew where his place was. As time goes on and he’s still searching for Daphne, Easy explains, “I was unhappy about going to meet Mr. Albright because I wasn't used to going into white communities, like Santa Monica, to conduct business… I never loitered anywhere except among my own people, in my own neighborhood” (Mosley, 97). This indicates that Easy very well knows he is out of place, therefore feeling uncomfortable. This uncomfort made Easy crave a sense of security and to want to go home. Easy’s uncomfortableness escalates when a white girl leaves her group of guy friends to go talk to Easy. While it is not explicitly stated that the white girl couldn’t talk to a black man like Easy, it is obvious that the social norms of the time made it unacceptable for a black man to interact with a white girl. As the girl continues to talk to him, Easy is aware of the repercussions of talking her, and he responds reluctantly with the hopes that she will walk away and leave him alone. Soon enough, the girl’s friends see her with Easy and angrily approach the two. The guys are racist and violent towards Easy, but no matter how tempting it is to fight back, Easy knows that he is in a lose-lose situation. “I could have broken his neck. I could have put out his eyes or broken all of his fingers. But instead I held my breath… I could have killed all of them too. What did they know about violence? I could have crushed their windpipes one by one and they couldn't have done a thing to stop me. They couldn't even run fast enough to escape me. I was still a killing machine...By then I knew I had to get out of there before there were  two or three dead bodies, one of them being mine” (Mosley, 99).

Daphne is caught up in this racial identity struggle as well. Daphne is perceived as a white woman, when in reality, she is African American and just happens to have light-skin. This is because Daphne changes her appearance and the way people view her in order to fit in among her surroundings and to escape the racial difficulties that come along with being African American. Due to this, she is compared to a chameleon. “Daphne was like the chameleon lizard. She changed for her man” (Mosley, 230). Throughout the novel, we see her facial expressions, eye color, and even hair color change. Easy would see the look in her face change. Sometimes she would have a loving, sweet look and other times her face would have a harsh, cold look. It is often mentioned that “Her eyes flashed green...Her eyes turned blue,” and “Her nose, her cheeks, her skin color- they were white. Daphne was a white woman” (Mosley, 248). When we learn that Daphne is actually black, both Easy and the readers are extremely shocked. I think this is something that Mosley did on purpose to show that Daphne had to keep changing herself and pretend to be someone she is not because she doesn’t fit in anywhere. She did not fit in with the rest of the African American community, as she is very light-skinned and people often told her she didn’t even look white. If people who are the same race as you often tell you that you look like you are of another race, it probably makes her feel insignificant ,like an outsider, like she doesn’t belong. When she passes as a white woman, people believe she is a white woman, which gives her a sense of belonging and identity. If people identify her as white, why shouldn’t she do the same? However, by doing this, she is denying her true identity. Like Mouse said, “She wanna be white. All them years people be telling her how she light-skinned and beautiful but all the time she knows that she can’t have what white people have. So she pretend and then lose it all. She can love a white man but all he can love is the white girl he think she is” (Mosley, 252). By constantly changing Daphne’s personality and transitioning from Daphne to Ruby, Mosley is able to reveal the struggle to commit to one own’s racial identity. Likewise, Easy also has trouble committing to his own racial identity. “That’s just like you, Easy. You learn stuff and you be thinking like white men be thinking. You be thinking that what’s right for them is right for you. She look like she white and you think like you white… And a nigger ain’t never gonna be happy unless he accept what he is” (Mosley, 253). Easy thinks that if he mimicks white men’s behavior, then he will be able to fit in more with the white side of Los Angeles and not face the disrespect that African Americans encounter on a daily basis.

While it is easy to criticize Easy and Daphne for not accepting who they truly are, just as Mouse frowns upon it, I think the way Mosley presents the racial barrier between whites and African Americans justifies Easy and Daphne’s reason for not taking pride in their racial background. Both of these characters do not accept who they truly are in an attempt to fit in with the world around them. I think it is our natural tendency to want to fit in, and it can make us extremely uncomfortable when we feel like the oddball of the group. I experienced something similar when I moved from Spain to the US. Even though I learned English very quickly, it wasn’t as easy of a task for my mom. As a result, I was forced to speak to her in Spanish. I didn’t really mind when we were alone, but for some reason, young-middle-school me was embarrassed to speak Spanish in front of my friends. It felt awkward speaking a foreign language in front of my English-speaking friends, and it was as if I was showing them a private, personal aspect of my life. By speaking Spanish in front of them, I was showing them that I was different, and at such a young age, the only thing I wanted was to fit in and be like everyone else. To avoid said embarrassment, I would keep my conversations with my mom when my friends were around extremely limited. “When do you want me to pick you up?” she’d often ask over the phone. To which I quickly, quietly responded, “Not sure, bye.” I don’t do that anymore now that I’m older, and I actually take a lot of pride in being able to speak Spanish and maintaining my Spanish roots by speaking Spanish with my parents. However, whenever I look back on that phase I went through, I can’t help but think that everyone has had to have found themselves in some situation where they wanted to fit in with a group and therefore were in denial of their true identity, just like how Easy and Daphne from Devil in a Blue Dress try to become more “white” in order to break apart from the racial barriers that were in place at the time.