Weldon Johnson
Separate the Races?
One of the most prevalent themes explored in James Weldon Johnson's The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man is the ramifications of miscegenation during America's racially charged late 19th/early 20th century epoch. Johnson's work highlights the daily vicissitudes that are a direct consequence of the taboo social mixing of African-Americans and Caucasians. Originally engendered as one of the many unforeseen products of this country's chattel slavery period, interracial coitus would go on to greatly alter the lives of all participants involved -- spanning across gender, color and age distinctions -- and produce a remarkable number of perverse situations for all parties.
This thesis particularly applies to the progeny of affairs of miscegenation -- the children who often endured a sense of alienation and isolation that distances them from being unconditionally accepted by both races, African-American and Caucasian (Williams 1987, 141). In the following quotations, the narrator and protagonist of The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man explains the sense of separation he felt upon recently discovering he is...
"…the other coloured children at school, I had learned what their status was, and now I learned that theirs was mine. I had had no particular like or dislike for these black and brown boys and girls…but I do know that when the blow fell, I had a very strong aversion to being classed with them. So I became something of a solitary (p.23)." The narrator's alienation is evinced from the fact that he became a "solitary," with an "aversion" to those who shared part of his ethnicity. The elitist sensibilities that have estranged him from other African-Americans are also responsible for the teasing and alienation he receives from Caucasians at school, once they realize he is no longer one of them.
As the history of miscegenation in this country readily demonstrates, all too frequently Caucasian males would have sexual relationships with African-American women (Baraka 1984, 227). Both participants, however, would more than likely not be free from the unnatural occurrences and distortions of normal patterns of living that such actuations caused in a largely segregated society. The following quotation, in which the narrator's…
