Flying Home

Todd’s goals throughout the story are to prove that skin color and race are not indicative of one’s capabilities and that no race is superior to another. He nevertheless finds himself irritated and even repulsed by Jefferson and Teddy. He views them as inferior; when he thinks that Jefferson is mocking him, he is even more hurt and angry than if a white man were to do it because Jefferson lacks power and prestige. His descriptions of Jefferson are harsh: For example, he compares Jefferson to a clown. When Jefferson asks Todd what he likes about flying, Todd thinks, “[I]t makes me less like you” (153).

Todd’s fear of judgment and internalized racism exhibit the bind of double consciousness. It is not that Todd is ashamed of being Black, but he does not want to be a Black person that proves racist stereotypes to be true. He wants to distance himself from the negative stereotypes the white officers tend to associate with Black people. As a Black sharecropper working on a white man’s land, Jefferson embodies the position in which many formerly enslaved Black people found themselves after emancipation. This makes Jefferson seem, in Todd’s eyes, uneducated and unfree.