Examples Of White Father In The Invisible Man

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The Great White Father and his Tools
In society there are always people who act like they are the great white father. When someone is called out for being a great white father, it is used to describe someone who abuses their high position to control the people that work for them. Someone who acts like that in today’s society is former NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling. Sterling is a prime example of what a modern day Brother Jack or Mr. Norton is like. In Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, white dominance is further portrayed by Brother Jack who controls the brotherhood and is using it to achieve his own selfish goal, but pretends to be helping the black people gain equality on the outside. In both the book and today’s society, there are people …show more content…

Lucius Brockway is telling the narrator, “Well you might not believe it, but I helped the Old Man make up that slogan… “I got me three-hundred-dollar bonus for helping to think that up.”(217). Brockway is proud of himself for coming up with the jingle “If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White”(217). He thinks that the three-hundred-dollars that he got was a great reward for coming up with a simple jingle for the company. Brockway does not think about how much the company is actually profiting from the phrase that he came up with and does not realize that the three-hundred-dollars that he got was an unbelievably small sum compared to it. The company uses the three-hundred-dollars to satisfy Brockway and keep him under control so that they can continue to use him for their own benefits. Brockway is blind to the fact that he is being taken advantage of by the company and think that the money that he got was a huge amount while in reality they are just giving him this sum because they want to keep him from complaining and make him think that the company values him so that he works harder. This shows how the company sees Brockway as a cog in their machine and uses him to for their own pleasures. Then later in the book the narrator finally realizes that he was being used by the school and thinks, “One moment I believed, I was dedicated, willing to …show more content…

In Invisible Man the narrator and a bunch of other black people are in a battle royal in order to entertain some rich and influential white people. What is really happening is that they are fighting each other for “gold coins” which are really just coins painted gold. “‘Boys, it’s all yours,’ the man said. ‘You get all you grab.’ ‘That’s right, Sambo,’ a blond man said, winking at me confidentially.” (26). This quote shows how the black people are willing to fight their own race for a few gold coins and for pleasing the white men in hopes of gaining their favor. The narrator realizes that the gold coins are just normal coins painted gold, but he does not mind because he believes that he is gaining the rich white people’s favor when he is really just making a fool of himself and portraying himself as “Sambo” for the people in power. The white people do not actually favor any of them over the others and simply see them and judge them as entertainment value. They like playing the great white father who is in charge of how the black people think and do things. Later when Bledsoe and the narrator are talking he says, “ True they support it, but I control it. I’s big and black and I say ‘Yes suh’ as loudly as any burrhead when it’s convenient, but I’m still the king down

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    In Battle Royal, the first chapter of Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison creates a vivid picture of the volatile relationships between the black inhabitants of an unnamed southern state and the dominant Whites of the area through master full use of imagery and complex figurative language. From the context of the story one can safely assume it takes place in the mid to late 40s, a time in American history where Jim Crow laws were in full effect and Whites controlled almost every aspect of the society. In brief, the story recounts an event in the anonymous narrator’s life where he was invited to speak at an special occasion yet is coerced into participating in a brutal melee against several other boys. The brawl is sport to entertain the men there

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