"The Black Dick": race, sexuality, and discourse in the L.A. novels of Walter Mosley - African American detective novels

African American Review, Summer, 1997 by Roger A. Berger

Mosley in essence defends his use of a brutalized black male sexuality by claiming that "poverty is tattooed on black and brown skins. Ignorance and violence, sex and criminality are deeply etched in Hispanic and African hues" ("Black" 132); and, indeed, there is even a sense in which Mosley criticizes Rawlins's relentless heterosexuality, for at the end of each novel we find a chastened and psychologically shattered Rawlins almost completely alone. Yet Rawlins's overactive libido clearly presents problems in any argument that attempts to "heroize" him, and Mosley's representation of black male sexuality (and "criminality") as "deeply etched in . . . African hues" indeed exemplifies rather than subverts hooks's description of the discursive criminalization of the black-male subject. What is more, Mosley's redeployment of sexuality ironically repositions him under the rubric of white-male detective fiction, because Chandler's apparent de-emphasis of sexuality actually represents a kind of disguised sexuality, a homosocial violence that binds men together. Mosley, in his novels, makes manifest (much like Mickey Spillane) what is latent in Chandler, a relentless misogyny coupled with an inability or unwillingness to question the underlying "law" of white patriarchal society. As bell hooks points out, "Black men who embrace patriarchal masculinity, phallocentrism, and sexism . . . do not threaten or challenge white domination . . . but reinscribe it" (98).(8) It is also important to note that Mosley's version of an essentialized black-male sexuality is complemented by a kind of insatiable black-female sexuality. Women in Mosley's detective novels are often either femme fatales or sexual objects who exude sexual attraction and desire. Black Betty exemplifies the latter type:

There was almost a smile on [Betty's] battered face. And then there it was, that look of appreciation that Betty had for the male sex. A look that was at once hungry and satisfied. Men communicated to Betty with their bodies and sex. She didn't care about our words or our hearts. (203)

The suggestion is made here that Betty is in a sense responsible for Cain's earlier rape of her: Her unchained sexuality in essence drove him to it.

Thus, despite some discursive breaks with the genre, Mosley ultimately makes use of the hardboiled detective fiction tradition. Rawlins exhibits all of the characteristics of the male Chandlerian detective - moral commitment, isolation, endurance, irony, and the like - and, at the same time, inhabits what might be termed the degraded Chandlerian moral universe. Clearly many people in the black community trust Rawlins, interpreting him as a kind of social bandit. As he comments,

People would come to me if they had serious trouble but couldn't go to the police. Maybe somebody stole their money or their illegally registered car. Maybe they worried about their daughter's company or a wayward son. I settled disputes that would have otherwise come to bloodshed. I had a reputation for fairness and the strength of my convictions among the poor. Ninety-nine out of a hundred black folk were poor back then, so my reputation went quite a way. (Red Death 15)