Ellison Race in Ellison\'s Invisible

Ellison Race

In Ellison's Invisible Man the hindrances to the creation of individual identity are not merely limited to racism as it is generally understood; instead, to him, the racial picture in the United States needs to be recognized as a specific relationship between black and white that has been created and defined by white men. In other words, America cannot be properly understood as a black and white society; rather, it is a white and non-white society. Ellison handles this issue very artfully by both revealing what he means by the terms "black" and "white," and by offering a possible escape from the horrors of racism -- modern art. Jazz music, from his perspective, serves as the universal link between races and cultures. Its untamed and unregulated expression mimics the potential that a nation like the United States possesses. However, as his nameless protagonist quickly finds, music may only be a momentary respite from the structural barriers in America for any individual who finds themselves somehow ill-defined by the archetypal American -- the white, heterosexual, affluent male.

Invisible Man definitively places itself within the broad historical context of ethnicity in twentieth century United States; largely, this is accomplished through the nameless protagonist of the story, who is intended to be representative of many black Americans. In this light, it is possible to grasp the role of jazz within his novel, as he emphasizes its unique character -- it is both a uniquely black and uniquely American form of expression. In the near sixty years since its original publication "social and cultural historians have brought the history of jazz into the mainstream narrative of United States history," (Peretti 2001). In short, the significance of jazz within the story of the United States, which was realized by Ellison, has gradually become recognized within a more mainstream context. In other words, the invisible nature of this form of cultural expression has been gradually evaporating through time.

The conception of race that Ellison presents is very similar to that of many other social theorists: he contends that black America is made invisible by its contrast to the dominant culture. Simone De Beauvoir agrees with this general assessment of what it means to be a marginalized member of society. She is an explicit existentialist; De Beauvoir believes that for human beings "existence precedes essence," (De Beauvoir 139). This means that although human beings are brought into this world in a particular form, the precise way in which they interpret this form is generated by their own consciousness and the setting in which they live out their lives. It is from this philosophical belief that external definitions of race, class, and femininity impress themselves upon individual people, alter the ways in which they view themselves, and alter the ways in which they behave. In this way, Ellison's character is prevented from generating an identity independent of the limitations put upon him by white culture; and although jazz is used as an example of what true social fusion could be, it is also repressed by the dominant culture.

Jazz, blues, spirituals and black folk religion have all been powerful forces within the black American community; they have provided some form of structuring and meaning to often tumultuous and chaotic experiences of being black in a racialized society. The difficulty, as Ellison approached it, was that these aspects of American life were routinely rejected, hidden, or suppressed by the dominant culture -- they were made invisible. Jazz, in American history, is significant in this respect because it exhibited a tangling of cultures and even races, at the same time as it became the first audible announcement of the African-Americans' cultural coming of age. It was this sort of self-authentication that Ellison seems to have been concerned with. He is interested in the fact that Americans managed to take the instruments and musical schemes bequeathed to them by white culture, and mold them into something that could not be measured or even understood by traditional scales of reference. In this way, jazz, to Ellison, became representative of the modern fusion between varying dialogues and folk traditions from around the United States, as it simultaneously managed to break down long-established cultural boundaries. It is notable that many of the first jazz musicians, and Ellison himself, received musical educations from European masters and then managed to bring this perspective home and build it into something new. So, jazz's position within the overall story of the United States parallels that of the nation as a whole; it is a nation of immigrants seeking out their own unique identities.

Fundamentally, Ellison perceived jazz as something that signified the best of American society; he called jazz "that embodiment of a superior democracy in which each individual cultivated his uniqueness and yet did not class with his neighbors," (Ostendorf 111). Ellison handles jazz, within the pages of Invisible Man, as the only true American cultural creation. In this respect, the narrator's search for individual identity falls within the broader context of what blackness is within a racist society, while jazz represents both the outlet for individuality and a model for what life should be. This melding of folk traditions and beliefs that jazz allows for is particularly what the narrator has difficulty doing with himself throughout the novel. As he passes from the Liberty Paints plant to the Brotherhood he finds that the specific roles that such communities have prescribed for "blackness" tend to limit the individual's multifaceted character.

From the Liberty Paints plant the narrator learns one way in which blackness can be perceived -- merely as the contrast through which pure "whiteness" can be seen: "Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you'd have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn't white clear through," (Ellison 157). In the physical sense this is done with the paints, but it is analogous to the way the workforce is organized: the superiority of whiteness can only be discerned if blackness is subverted or weakened. So, in some respects, what it means to be white in America can be understood only by structuring society such that what it means to be black in America is elementally inferior. Yet, just as the factory categorically disallows this duality in the product that it sells, white America denies that it works to hinder black Americans in an analogous relationship. Similarly, when the narrator joins the brotherhood, he discovers that if he wants to fight racial injustice he must conform to the image that has been orchestrated for him.

Overall, the narrator has trouble shaping an identity for himself in a society that wants to continually fit him into a prescribed role of a black man in a white man's world. In theory, the misconceptions of others should not centrally alter who the narrator is able to become; however, he finds that the prejudiced visions of others work to limit the courses of action that he is able to take. Since he cannot act as he wishes, he cannot be the person that he might otherwise have become. Precisely what is required, accordingly, is a choice: either the narrator -- or black Americans in general -- can choose to embrace their invisibility within the racialized setting of the United States, or he can choose to chart a new course in an attempt to contribute their own distinctive personal gifts to society. Obviously, the latter is the choice that Ellison makes by becoming an author, and it is the choice that the narrator makes as well.