The Autobiography of the Ex-Colored Man: The Ability to Pass

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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 “white” and “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 “white” and “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 “privilege of whiteness”.

Beginning from when the narrator was a little boy, being perceived as white by his classmates, while he was neither black nor white but a combination of both. As a result of the narrator being raised on the perception of being a ”white” male, that life style was all he knew. The narrator uses the “privilege of whiteness”, which is taking full advantage of the opportunities that is presented before you due to your race. “Privilege of whiteness” gave the narrator a since of ease, knowing by passing as a “white” was his chance to live the American dream.

According to the narrative, the narrator believed it was possible for blacks to be successful and make a lineage for the African American race to look forward too. He idolized famous historians such Booker T. Washington, wanted to be like them to form a name for himself as a positive “black” man. “Beside them I feel small and selfish. I am an ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are men who are making history and a race. I, too, might have taken part in a work so glorious.”()
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...t his choice to deny his birthright as a man of color but he is content with the choice he made. “My love for my children makes me glad that I am what I am, and keeps me from desiring to be otherwise; and yet, when I sometimes open a little box in which I still keep my fast yellowing manuscripts, the only tangible remnants of a vanished dream, a dead ambition, a sacrificed talent, I cannot repress the thought, that, after all, I have chosen the lesser part, that I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage.”(154)

Works Cited

Individualism, Success, and American Identity in The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

Kathleen Pfeiffer

African American Review , Vol. 30, No. 3 (Autumn, 1996), pp. 403-419

Published by: Indiana State University

Article Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3042533

Johnson, James W. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. New

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