Life as a White Man in The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man

Life as a White Man in The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man

"...the effect is a tendency toward lighter complexions, especially among the more active elements in the race. Some might claim that this is a tacit admission of colored people among themselves of their own inferiority judged by the color line. I do not think so. What I have termed an inconsistency is, after all, most natural; it is, in fact, a tendency in accordance with what might be called an economic necessity. So far as racial differences go, the United States puts a greater premium on color, or better, lack of color, than upon anything else in the world."

--the protagonist (page 72)

James Weldon Johnson's first-person narrator in his fictional account, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, forwards a cynical, if not Darwinian, point-of-view about skin color. He claims it is "most natural" for black people to procreate with those who are lighter skinned. And he coolly excuses this supposedly common practice as pure economic necessity. The Black Nationalist must protest this fatalism. The Marxist simply chalks another one up for his side. What about the humanist? What is he or she to make of such unreasonable and callous tactics used to pursue the American Dream?

The sympathetic humanist might bristle at first, but would eventually concur. For it's hard to argue with poverty. At the time the novel was published (1912), America held very few opportunities for the Negro population. Some of the more successful black men, men with money and street savvy, were often porters for the railroads. In other words the best a young black man might hope for was a position serving whites on trains. Our protagonist--while not adverse to hard work, as evidenced by his cigar rolling apprenticeship in Jacksonville--is an artist and a scholar. His ambitions are immense considering the situation. And thanks to his fair skinned complexion, he is able to realize many, if not all, of them.

There is some evidence that connects our protagonist's line of thinking with his upbringing. Our protagonist's mother tells him, "The best blood of the South is in you," (page 8) when the child asks whom his father is. Clearly, his mother was proud of (and perhaps still in love with) this genteel white man who gave her a son. So his bold pronouncements make much sense in light of his own condition.