Abstract
When Invisible Man, the seminal novel by Ralph Ellison was published in 1953, it quickly established a reputation as one of the most important literary depictions of the struggles of African-Americans in the history of fiction. The central character, the titular ‘invisible man,’ struggles with a metaphorical invisibility that was endemic to the 20th-century attitudes of white hegemony toward African-Americans, and encapsulated the black experience as one of marginalization and oppression. These elements contribute greatly to manifesting a vision of black American life that expressly prevents blacks from achieving the same level of respectability and acceptance as whites, regardless of merit and overt senses of justice. When viewed through the lenses of critical race theory, queer theory and black academia, Invisible Man provides a clear and complex portrait of the disenfranchisement and isolation that many black men felt during the mid-20th century in the United States, offering a powerful portrait of the kind of oppression that is still felt to this day.
When Invisible Man, the seminal novel by Ralph Ellison was published in 1953, it quickly established a reputation as one of the most important literary depictions of the struggles of African-Americans in the history of fiction. The central character, the titular ‘invisible man,’ struggles with a metaphorical invisibility that was endemic to the 20th-century attitudes of white hegemony toward African-Americans, and encapsulated the black experience as one of marginalization and oppression. These elements contribute greatly to manifesting a vision of black American life that expressly prevents blacks from achieving the same level of respectability and acceptance as whites, regardless of merit and overt senses of justice. When viewed through the lenses of critical race theory, queer theory and black academia, Invisible Man provides a clear and complex portrait of the disenfranchisement and isolation that many black men felt during the mid-20th century in the United States, offering a powerful portrait of the kind of oppression that is still felt to this day.
The unnamed narrator of Invisible Man is not literally invisible, but the protagonist of the book is figuratively invisible, and made so through a decided lack of agency that was typical of black men and women in modern America. In reference to his invisibility, the narrator declares, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me” (Ellison 3). This mentioned refusal refers to the inability of the privileged white community of the United States to acknowledge the man’s humanity and the humanity of his fellow African-Americans, choosing instead to treat them as second-class citizens who have to struggle twice as hard to gain the same privileges and rights as those who are considered the American white default. This, in turn, makes the narrator of Invisible Man unseen in a symbolic, cultural manner that speaks to his oppression along racial lines.
As an effect of this invisibility, the narrator begins to unravel psychologically over the course of the novel, Ellison showing the disastrous effect racism and disenfranchisement have on the human psyche. The narrator acts as a representative of all struggling black men of the time, as the buildup of this systemic discrimination gives him a profound feeling of unease: “You ache with the need to convince yourself that you do exist in the real world, that you're a part of all the sound and anguish, and you strike out with your fists, you curse and you swear to make them recognize you. And, alas, it's seldom successful” (Ellison 3-4). This stems greatly from his people’s history as slaves, which he then internalizes as a kind of cultural self-hatred, which he himself recognizes as unhelpful: “I am not ashamed of my grandparents for having been slaves. I am only ashamed of myself for having at one time been ashamed” (Ellison 13). Here, the dichotomy between white hegemony encouraging blacks to know their place because of their lower social status and the need for blacks to feel pride in their ancestors’ sacrifices showcases the unique problems inherent to African-American civic life. In a white-dominated world stratified by race, blacks are socially encouraged to acknowledge their subordinate status through a centuries-old legacy of oppression.
Despite these oppressions, the narrator manages to find comfort in the 20th century’s increasing pantheon of visible black figures, though Ellison understands the complexity of the nature of their visibility. In this context, the most visible African-Americans in the country were musicians and entertainers like Louis Armstrong, who manage to wield substantial cultural power while still somehow mitigated to performing for white audiences who supply him with that power. This relationship strikes the narrator as intriguing, particularly in relation to his own invisibility: “Perhaps I like Louis Armstrong because he's made poetry out of being invisible. I think it must be because he's unaware that he is invisible. And my own grasp of invisibility aids me to understand his music” (Ellison 7). With these comparisons between himself and the increased visibility of black cultural figures, Ellison’s goal is to further showcase the desperation with which black youth seek to escape the deeply-entrenched isolation and marginalization they feel within American society.
American society places a high value on education as a means for people, particularly minorities, to uplift themselves and achieve a measure of success and the visibility that they so crave. In the world of Invisible Man, however, Ellison points out the inherent hypocrisy and double standards inherent to the way academia treats whites and blacks, as the college culture has its own racial codes. For instance, black behavior is pointed out as specifically different and undesired as compared to white behavior; academic behavior is particularly coded as white in its makeup and interests. This, in turn, forces black college students (like the narrator) to play along and change their behavior in order to fit in, thus making them separate themselves from their own black mindset.
The narrator himself is perpetually anxious about the way his white professors perceive him: Mr. Norton, one of the white trustees, treats him in a way that encourages self-hatred for black culture. In one scene, the narrator sees other black people in their vicinity when spending time with Mr. Norton, psychologically separating himself form them in order to gain the support and acceptance of his white benefactor (Ellison 78). For instance, when he drives Mr. Norton around and scans past a group of lower-class African-Americans, his instinct is to stop the car in order “to assure him that far from being like any of the people we had seen, I hated them” (Ellison 78). He wants to inform Mr. Norton that, he “believed in [Norton’s] own goodness and kindness in extending the hand of his benevolence to helping us poor, ignorant people out of the mire and darkness.” (Ellison 78). This is but one example of the white-fueled shame that the narrator feels once he is implicitly accepted into the world of white-led academia.
In this respect, the narrator falls into the rhetorical trap that requires that blacks be confirmed and accepted into white culture in order to actually become visible and respected. With Mr. Norton, he becomes immensely self-hating as an African-American, internalizing his racism in order to earn the favor of white cultural leaders. The narrator points out how helpful it is to “flatter rich white folks. Perhaps he'd give me a large tip, or a suit, or a scholarship next year” (Ellison 30). To that end, Ellison points out how black agency is inherently threatened by the presence of white systems that seek to erase blackness in exchange for white patronage. Under the systemic racism of America, race is constructed to create a caste system that encourages abject populations like African-Americans to curry favor in exchange for their own respectability.
Invisible Man’s depiction of white privilege and supremacy within American academia continues by pointing out the unique divisions that blacks themselves formed in order to separate themselves from those who were ‘respectable’ and those who were not. Typically, class played a vital role, as richer, more well-educated blacks held a similarly dim view of lower-class black men and women as their white counterparts: “How all of us at the college hated the black-belt people, the ‘peasants,’ during those days! We were trying to lift them up and they did everything it seemed to pull us down” (Ellison 37). By matching the discriminatory behavior and thought patterns of white academics, looking down on them for engaging in the actions that invited ridicule from whites, these black academics turned their back on their own cultural authenticity by changing their nature to curry favor and visibility within white culture.
The central example of the sacrifices black men must make to their agency and identity in order to achieve visibility is most evident in the narrator’s encounters with Dr. Bledsoe, the African-American president of the college he attends. His own complacency about the problems faced by blacks on campus speaks to the administration’s own unwillingness to address the inequalities in academic culture between whites and blacks, instead choosing to infiltrate white culture and find their own positions of power. Dr. Bledsoe, rather than encouraging the narrator to change the system, explains that he must play ball within the corrupt racist system of academia out of necessity: “I didn't make it, and I know that I can't change it. But I've made my place in it and I'll have every Negro in the country hanging on tree limbs by morning if it means staying where I am” (Ellison 112). Dr. Bledsoe’s own acculturation leaves him highly invested in the white-led culture in which he has found a favored position, as he works instead to find a small measure of validation in the form of white acceptance through an abandonment of the needs of his people. For the narrator, and Ellison, Dr. Bledsoe represents the dark side of black acquiescence to white-dominated codes of behavior and acceptance of the status quo.
One of the social aspects regarding race and multiculturalism in Invisible Man, and another reason Ellison’s narrator feels invisible, is the social construction of race and how it renders black success in white-led America virtually impossible. The book itself provides a tremendously powerful portrait of the “feelings of rage and invisibility that are a consequence of living within a racist culture,” a good portion of which relates closely to the inability for black Americans to own up to the roles they have been expected to perform in society (Kim 309). The narrator of Invisible Man tries unsuccessfully to perform the tasks that American culture places as signposts for success, including getting a good job, earning a degree, and so on. This is due to the racist systems within academia and the job market that are created specifically to bring him down, preventing people like the narrator from succeeding.
All of these factors contribute to the notion in Invisible Man that it is a trap to believe that blacks can truly achieve equality in the current state of American culture. Even though whites have lowered expectations of blacks, their standards for acceptance are shockingly contradictory, as they “seemed always to expect you to know those things which they'd done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing” (Ellison 244). In mainstream American culture, African-Americans are both criticized for being unintelligent and uncivilized, but must actually perform more admirably than whites to receive even the most basic level of respect. White culture’s inherent contradictions toward blacks is the centerpiece of Invisible Man’s larger points on race relations, as Ellison points out the futility of blacks trying to achieve equality by playing the game that white culture has set out for them.
Ellison’s pointed critique of racist American culture in Invisible Man extends beyond the simple divides in racial disparity, but also of a homophobia that is a secondary element to American racism. According to Kim, Invisible Man “gives voice to a particular intuition about the psychic motivations of white men: that they derive a specifically erotic gratification from their racist practices” (Kim 309). This element of white discrimination implies that white men receive a sense of sexual power in putting down those they feel are inferior and open to domination. This allows racism to fall into a similar psychological realm as sexism, in that white men in both instances glean sexual gratification from asserting the feminine nature of the Other and their own inherent superiority at not being a part of that in-group. To that end, discrimination against blacks in America is also coded as a fear of homosexuality in some respects. Black men are feminized within white-led American culture through their lack of power, which itself is an attempt to address the indirect fear whites have of being attracted to black men (Kim 309). To that end, the humiliation of black racism turns into a strange sexual overture, used by whites to create a distance from their own erotic interest in blacks.
Judging from a critical theory and sociological perspective, the themes and undercurrents of Invisible Man are highly evident in the social makeup and trends of 21st-century sociology. The feelings of invisibility experienced by Ellison’s narrator, for instance, are just as evident in the 21st century as they were at the time of Invisible Man; according to research, whites have been shown to have a lower level of attention towards minorities, right down to having lower visual attention to then (Brown-Iannuzzi et al. 33). For whites, African-Americans can be extremely culturally invisible, as whites will pay attention to black people in their immediate vicinity only if they are perceived as a threat; if they are not focused on the issue of violence, drugs or crime, they will often pay little to no attention to blacks around them (Brown-Iannuzzi et al. 33-34). In this respect, Ellison’s larger cultural points remain self-evident, as the invisibility of blacks is virtually literalized by the psychological desire of the white majority to pretend that African-Americans and their struggle do not exist. This feeling of invisibility is a tremendously large part of Invisible Man, as white-on-black hostility remains innately present within American culture.
African-American struggles within academia are also alive and well, as minority scholarship is still affected by the hostile college cultures that can come from white-led faculty and populations. White-led culture can often take the form of microaggressions that, rather than being overt (and therefore easily targeted) examples of racism, contribute to the idea that black academics are not desired within college culture (Solorzano 132). This can come from things as simple as white scholars feeling uncomfortable with the perception that black scholars are disproportionately concerned with race relations, minimizing their concerns and refusing to validate them. Furthermore, minorities in academia still feel pressure from the white upper-class students that populate most of these institutions to conform, thus making them less likely to feel comfortable (Solorzano 128).
Works Cited
Brown-Iannuzzi, Jazmin L., et al. "The invisible man: Interpersonal goals moderate inattentional
blindness to African Americans." Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 143.1 (2014): 33.
Ellison, Ralph. Invisible Man. Random House, 1953.
Kim, Daniel Y. "Invisible Desires: Homoerotic Racism and Its Homophobic Critique in Ralph
Ellison's ‘Invisible Man’." Novel: A Forum on Fiction. Brown University, 1997.
Solorzano, Daniel G. "Critical race theory, race and gender microaggressions, and the experience
of Chicana and Chicano scholars." International journal of qualitative studies in education 11.1 (1998): 121-136.
