Racial Identity in The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man

Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Negro race still was not accepted as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles faced during this period, one must take a look at its' literature. James Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities faced before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” One does not only read this book, but instead one takes a journey alongside a burdened mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.

In Johnson's novel, the young mulatto boy is at first completely unaware of his unique circumstance, and lives life comfortably and oblivious to the oppression of the black race outside of his home in Connecticut. He is characterized as a bright, quick learning young man whose talents do not cease at intelligence; he is somewhat of a musical prodigy. The young boy's fingers could sweep across the ivory keys of a piano to produce the most beautifully captivating and enchanting sounds. At school he interacted well with his classmates, but was always somewhat of a loner. As his education continues, he begins to become somewhat fascinated with a negro boy, whom he calls Shiny, and begins to describe him in great detail. Shiny was smart, driven, and a quick learner, and the narrator later realizes that he was never given the credit he deserved because of his race. In an essence, Shiny and the narrator are no different from one another, other than what the narrator believes to be their ethnicity. At the age of eleven, the narrator learns of a secret that will forever follow him and essentially be the base of every decision he would e...

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...ion placed on the black man in America, but society also made him the punchline a joke. He was in a sense a victim of society's cruel joke, for even though he passed and lived as a white man, he felt constant guilt for hiding who he really was to escape the fate he was born into. He chose to live his life with no definite racial identity. Johnson chose to only let the reader known the narrator as the “Ex-Colored Man,” and he could not have chose a more fitting name concerning racial identity. In an essence, the man was like a Van Gogh or Di Vinci painting after being restored; the original color is still underneath the outer coating. No matter how one tries to hide it, the original product is still there.

Works Cited

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Boston: Sherman, French & Company, 1912. Reissued by Dover Publications, 1995.