Rawls is meant to be the most well-spoken of these three. He reads a lot, and is self-educated. But it did seem more natural for him to slip in to a patois as he riled himself up about Walter’s “passing”. So I guess your analysis is correct.

But I’m not sure that was a conscious decision on m part. I think it’s more that these are new characters, and I haven’t quite nailed down their voices. I’m also fairly self-conscious about their dialogue. I want to give them distinctive and realistic speech patterns, but I’m really concerned about overdoing it. I don’t want them to come across like caricatures. It may take me a little while to settle into a rhythm.

Exactly. Rawls isn’t completely right when he ways that they “don’t put colored soldiers on no posters,” but his point is valid. Propaganda itself was segregated, just like everything else. There was propaganda for whites and propaganda for blacks, and they didn’t overlap.

As a propaganda figure, the Bombardier is a heroic character, and the racial climate of the time would never let a black man be portrayed as a hero, and especially not as a member of a primarily white group of heroes.

I guess the problem would be more likely that he is officer grade, not crew grade. At least that is what I noticed while being around US military (in the nineties). The gap between officer ranks and crew are way bigger than, for example, the german army. Of course, the gap was bigger in the british army and even more in the french.

Wow, really? Thanks for the information.

The Air Force didn’t become a separate branch of the armed services until 1947. At the time of WWII, it was part of the Army.

I think that it’s more than “whites” that hold that belief still. I’ve seen white men told by their daughters to “stop fetishizing her race” because her mother was black.

I wish it’d all just stop being an issue.

Everyone knows this. Passing is still passing regardless of the reason.

The reporter from the Washington Beacon thinks he’s a captured Japanese kamikaze pilot.

She did it not to protect herself, but to promote herself.