Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

Invisible Man

Ralph Ellison's prologue to Invisible Man explains his perception that he is invisible because of ethnicity. The white population only sees African-American men as stereotypes and if they were viewed by whites at all it is through the lens of their racism. In the United States, the majority of the population since the founding has been white men and women. Consequently, anyone who does not belong to that racial category is considered a racial minority. The American record against African-American people has been particularly heinous, given the history of black slavery, then segregation and Jim Crow laws in the American south, only to name a few of the myriad of prejudicial policies which have affected that part of society. The narrator's invisibility, he acknowledges has all to do with the social indoctrination of the Caucasian population against the African-American community. The entirety of the narrator's life would be based upon the misconceptions of the majority population. Only by working through the limitations that the majority places on him can the narrator hope to improve his lot in life, as would be the case for any other exceptional person who happened to be born in the minority.

Ellison's narrator explores the position of not only himself, but of all African-Americans. For example, he states that "One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps because of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting name" (Ellison 2298). The only time that members of the white community deign to make contact with those in the minority culture is to assert their socially imposed superiority. In this case, although the narrator only bumps into a white man, and accidentally at that, the action deserves insults proffered against the narrator. Even the smallest of infractions deserves punishment simply because the African-American man is inferior in this culture.

The African-American men who are deemed to be exceptional are still not given the same kind of regard that is bestowed upon the lesser white men. Because of his gifts, the narrator has been granted a scholarship to further his education beyond the high school setting. However, the scholarship is for "the state college for negroes" (Ellison 2314). Since the ruling of Plessy v. Ferguson the United States government declared that segregation of people based on the color of their skin was acceptable. This went for elementary and high schools and then college as well. When the narrator mentions social equality, he is met with angry silence from the audience because he is making a claim to something to which he has no right. In this society, a negro will never be equal to his white countrymen. Creating a governmentally funded college for African-Americans gives that population the ability to obtain higher education, but there is also the understanding that the institution will not be as advanced or as well funded as the state college for white people. This allows the government to make a presentment that they are trying to better the lives of the minority population while at the same time limiting the tools they have to achieve social mobility.