Vitiligo anon here! I also wanted to know why you think of Dunbar as biracial(?)
This essay has actually been a long time coming so thank you for prompting it!
The C22 guys are not a diverse cast; the book goes only by historical accuracy and limited personal experience so doesnβt handle race well, and all of these people are white, white, white unless explicitly stated otherwise. There is no way Heller intentionally wrote Dunbar as a black man, but it is, in my opinion, the only way to read him. It enhances the entire book if you do.
I started reading Dunbar as black passing-for-white because it makes the bit where theyβre teasing the Texan about the threat of a desegregated hospital a hundred times better. Putting someone who very obviously has at least one black parent in a white ingroup because their skin was deemed βlight enoughβ fits the kind of narrative Heller is trying to push- something thatβs true but feels unreal; absurd without being funny. Dunbarβs the only character in a book of 50+ characters without any kind of physical description, and one of the only characters with a normal and quintessentially American surname. Heβs Yossarianβs best friend who goes to another school squadron and, like Yossarian, heβs obsessed with his own mortality. They commiserate in a way no one else does, so it would make sense that theyβre the only people of color in their cohort thrust together by circumstance.Β
All of that was enough for thinking of him as an average-looking guy from a black family, but as the book goes on itΒ really solidifies.
Dunbarβs whole deal with identity is hard to capture in just one passage, but it is the reason I specifically read him asΒ βpassingβ w/ light brown skin (Senegalese and Western European background, his great-grandparents the first generation of Dunbars not born into slavery.) Colorism has led to countless struggles with African American identity and I see him exploring that in a lot of ways.
This is already classism, but to make it a true catch-22 I like the idea that heβs the opposite of the fighter captain in every way that counts. Also a great example of the way he carries himself- funny, philosophical, but overly composed and prone to tamping down his emotions.
In the back half of the book heβs constantly getting in trouble even though his temper and bad behavior are no worse than anyone elseβs. His anger is βoff-puttingβ and βunjustifiedβ even as Dobbsβ anger is excusable and Yossarianβs endearing. Dobbs is doing the exact same thing as Dunbar when theyβre accosted for throwing the wardrobe out, but Dunbarβs the one punished because he back-talks. Like Clevinger heβs framed as too smart for his own good, but rather than being a know-it-all itβs genuine moral outrage.
Speaking out is also what gets him killed in the end, and while the method of his death could conceivably have been used on anyone during WWII, there is a long, long, long history of the US government disappearing its black citizens.
That isnβt even all of it! One of those things where thereβs zero authorial intent but you can work it into the very fabric of the narrative. Itβs a shame Heller never got around to writing a whole book about him, but I also feel like maybe it wasnβt his story to tell.