The Autobiography of the Ex-Colored Man The Ability to...

The Autobiography of the Ex-Colored Man: The Ability to Pass The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man depicts the narrator as a liminal character. Beginning with an oblivious knowledge of race as a child, and which racial group he belonged, to his well knowing of â€Å"white† and â€Å"black† and the ability to pass as both. On the account of liminality, the narrator is presenting himself as an outsider. Because he is both a â€Å"white† and â€Å"black† male, he does not fit in with either racial group. In the autobiography of an Ex-colored man, James Weldon Johnson uses double consciousness to show the narrators stance as a person that gives up his birthright for the â€Å"privilege of whiteness†. Beginning from when the narrator was a little boy, being†¦show more content†¦Ã¢â‚¬Å"A great wave of humiliation and shame swept over me. Shame that I belonged to a race that could be so dealt with; and shame for my country, that it, the great example of democracy to the world, should be the only civilized, if not the only state on earth, where a human being would be burned alive.†(137) Because of that day, the narrator made a decision that he felt was best for him at the time, which was to let the world make their own perception of him. â€Å"I argued that to forsake one’s race to better one’s condition was no less worthy an action than to forsake one’s country for the same purpose. I finally made up my mind that I would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race; but that I would change my name, raise a mustache, and let the world take me for what it would; that it was not necessary for me to go about with the label of inferiority pasted across my forehead.† (139) In the narrative, it is conclusive; the narrator’s adult life is considered a performance. Due to the fact he is a man of multiple race, it is hard to determine which lifestyle is the performance, and which lifestyle comes natural to him. The narrator has various connections to the â€Å"white† and/or â€Å"black† world. As a child, the narrator was friends with both â€Å"shiny† who was a black boy and â€Å"red head† whom was white. Both where considered his best friends even after the day he found out he wasShow MoreRelatedPassing in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man1105 Words   |  5 PagesIn 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was anonymously published by James Weldon Johnson. It is the narrative of a light-skinned man wedged between two racial categories; the offspring of a white father and a black mother, The Ex-Colored man is visibly white but legally clas sified as black. Wedged between these two racial categories, the man chooses to â€Å"pass† to the white society. In Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are, Brooke Kroeger describes â€Å"passing† as an act when â€Å"people effectivelyRead MoreThe American Dream in And the Earth Did Not Devour Him, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, and America is in the Heart873 Words   |  4 Pagesconditions hampered their ability to pursue happiness and created what W.E.B. Dubois called the veil, which refers to the fabric of racism that separates whites from other ethnicities and causes non-whites to see themselves under the distortion of a discriminative society. Thus, the idealized images of America were shattered by a grim reality. 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Consequently, in regards to society s principle of the one-drop rule, the narrator then faces an identity complex in understanding whether he is black since society has categorized him on the account of his bloodline, or white because of his external appearance. For at the end of the novel, he makes the consciousRead MoreStephen P. Robbins Timothy A. 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