Reading a sci-fi book from the early 80s and taken aback by a random passage:
Quote:
“It will suffice.” Zane left them and strode to the church on the other side of the nursing home.
He was in luck. The church choir was rehearsing for the coming weekend service. Several black girls were present, doing what to Zane’s ear was a mishmash of notes and ululations.
The preacher spotted him immediately. “Hey, don’t you go takin’ none of mine, Death!” he protested. “We’re good folk here. We don’t want no trouble with you!”
Zane realized that this church might be poor and backward, but the preacher was a true man of God, able to discern a supernatural manifestation instantly. That would help. “I only want a hymnbook and a singer,” Zane said.
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I guess it was just socially acceptable in the 80s to insinuate that black churches were somehow not "real" churches?
The character in question is also
not a devout man by any stretch, so you have to assume that the judgment is the omniscient narrator's (i.e. the author's) more than the character's.