The two stories further illustrate the unease, even hostility, that blacks have tended to feel about their folklore, and about black history  In That I Had the Wings, Riley, a young black boy Ellison uses in several stories, hates his Aunt Kate and wishes she had died back in slavery times; in Flying Home, the black pilot who seeks escape hates the black farmer who rescued him after his crash.
The two stories are shocking to black readers.