Race And Protest In Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man

Race stands as an issue that has plagued American society since its beginning. Through the influence of leaders, innovative thinkers, and alliances the black community has been able to reach a point closer to equality than ever before. At the forefront of this change, just as most change, stands the protesting of an accepted norm. Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man is a work of written protest that challenged the pre-Civil Rights notion of black inferiority. The works showcased the wrongdoing toward the faceless, nameless African American narrator as a lesson to all about the rigidity of racial division. Protest Literature, as evidenced by the book The Invisible Man, is an effective form because of its use of characters, setting, and objects

In one instance, the narrator enters a seemingly normal community: working for the company Liberty Paints. Here, this business capitalizes on the labor of the black narrator to create a bright white paint product. When discussing their mission, the Liberty Paints worker states “‘We make the best white paint in the world, I don’t give a damn what nobody says. Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledgehammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through!’” (Ellison, 217). Without consideration, it may seem as though they are just discussing the quality of the product, however the dependance on black to make the white paint shows the true meaning. In the creation of the paint, a black chemical is needed to achieve optimal results, similar to how the almost all black labor force of the company is allowing them to succeed and create this bright product. Yet this equality of the colors is ignored as white shows through in the end, both in paint and skin. Liberty Paints as a whole protests the inferiority of blacks. It uses paint as a symbol for how they are continually covered up and forced to be something that they are not. The narrator even connects his experience and teaching here to the old southern saying “If you’re

Upon joining the Brotherhood, a political party that uses the narrator as a mouthpiece for their own success, the narrator is given a room. In here he sees a coin bank placed by the door that is a very stereotypical and juvenile depiction of a black person who eats coins when given them. Seeing this object in a space that the narrator thought was safe is extremely triggering as he states “For a second I stopped, feeling hate charging within me, then dashed over and grabbed it, suddenly as enraged by the tolerance or lack of discrimination, or whatever, that allowed Mary to keep such a self-mocking image around…” (Ellison, 319). This coin bank represents the white perspective of a “good” black person that will work and take whatever is given to them without complaint. Clearly the narrator’s smashing of this bank effectively protests the discrimination against the black community, as well as the black communities relative acceptance of the discrimination that has been placed upon them. He now shows strength in efforts to literally break out of this mold, a call that the book makes for others to join and step outside of the stereotype that the black image places on