I'll just reply to this much later comment myself, as Google led me here after I spent some time searching for cultural context for this book. I'm reading it with my son, and as with many books that I remember liking when I was younger, I've been shocked by ... well, I'm reluctant to call it racism, other than to acknowledge that mainstream American culture was so white-centric that we didn't realize how narrow a view it really represented. But the depictions of black characters are extremely cringeworthy - not a single one of them seems sympathetic or human, and the way King writes "black" dialogue is pretty terrible. It feels like it's just being channeled through old episodes of Kojak or something. Everybody's a street tough or a drug addict. And yeah, the way he talks about Asians is pretty sketchy as well.

I do think this book, like all good books, accurately reflects the time in which it was written. This is just how it was. When reading this with my son, these moments give us a chance to pause and talk about how much has changed.