Analysis Of James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man

1303 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: what are the two big moments in where james weldon johnson passes as white in his autobiography

AMBIVALENTLY COLORED
“Sometimes it seems to me that I have never really been a Negro, that I have been only a privileged spectator of their inner life; at other times I feel that I have been a coward, a deserter, and I am possessed by a strange longing for my mother 's people.” Thus encapsulates the painful dilemma of being of mixed race in America of James Weldon Johnson in his Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. From thinking of himself as white because of the lightness of his skin, to finding that in fact he was colored, and the constant struggle to perhaps deny it, to the peculiar pride that sometimes reared its head and caused him to embrace his Negro blood, his narrative revealed his inner conflict and wavering ambivalence towards who …show more content…

“Red Head” was unabashedly white and “Shiny” was just as unswervingly black. Yet these two became his only close friends when he went to public school. But when he unwittingly discovered that he was colored, the full impact of the discovery was almost painful in intensity. He spoke of his mother “suffering” for him as he pleaded with her, “Mother, mother, tell me am I a nigger?” As his mother confessed to him that she was not white, for him a dreadful “chasm” opened up right in front of his very …show more content…

“And so I have often lived through that hour, that day, that week, in which was wrought the miracle of my transition from one world into another; for I did indeed pass into another world. From that time I looked out through other eyes, my thoughts were colored, my words dictated, my actions limited by one dominating, all-pervading idea which constantly increased in force and weight until I finally realized in it a great, tangible fact.” He was a colored man! And with that knowledge came angst and fear, pleasure and pride, denial and acceptance. He discovered a need to weigh every word spoken for underlying meanings that may or may not be there. However, he admitted that the change did not occur so much in the attitude of his friends at school towards him. It was his own attitude towards them that had altered. Suddenly his view of the world was colored by suspicion and reserve.
Moreover, he found that where he had previously been indifferent towards the colored children in school, now that he found out that he was just like them, he hated it, “I had a very strong aversion to being classed with them.” Rather than embracing this heritage, he refuted it. And so he withdrew into himself and found comfort in reading. It was through his reading that he discovered “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” by Harriet Beecher Stowe and the Negro side of him was awakened. “It opened my eyes as to who and what I was and what

Show More
Related

  • A Summary Of Anthony Johnson As A Slavery?

    762 Words  | 2 Pages

    On March 8, 1655, Anthony Johnson made history by becoming the first legal slave owner in America( Woodbridge 1999). How could Johnson, a former indentured servant and fellow african, force someone into lifelong servitude? This man was John Casor (Nicholson, 2015). In order to justify forcing this man into slavery, Johnson used relativism.

    Read More

  • Book Review of The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    2071 Words  | 5 Pages

    Prior to the 1950s, very little research had been done on the history and nature of the United States’ policies toward and relationships with African Americans, particularly in the South. To most historians, white domination and unequal treatment of Negroes were assumed to be constants of the political and social landscapes since the nation’s conception. Prominent Southern historian C. Vann Woodward, however, permanently changed history’s naïve understanding of race in America through his book entitled The Strange Career of Jim Crow. His provocative thesis explored evidence that had previously been overlooked by historians and gave a fresh foundation for more research on the topic of racial policies of the United States.

    Read More

  • Blacks Passing as White in "The Garies and their Friends" by Frank J. Webb

    1268 Words  | 3 Pages

    I must tell you…if you should settle down here, you’ll have to be either one thing or other—white or colored. Either you must live exclusively amongst colored people, or go to the whites and remain with them. But to do the latter, you must bear in mind that it must never be known that you have a drop of African blood in your veins, or you would be shunned as if you were a pestilence; no matter how fair in complexion or how white you may be.

    Read More

  • C. Vann Woodward's The Strange Career of Jim Crow

    1227 Words  | 3 Pages

    In the months following the Brown v. Board of Education decision C. Vann Woodward wrote a series of lectures that would provide the basis for one of the most historically significant pieces of nonfiction literature written in the 20th century. Originally, Woodward’s lectures were directed to a local and predominantly southern audience, but as his lectures matured into a comprehensive text they gained national recognition. In 1955 Woodward published the first version of The Strange Career of Jim Crow, a novel that would spark a fluid historical dialogue that would continue for the next twenty years. Woodward foresaw this possibility as he included in the first edition, “Since I am…dealing with a period of the past that has not been adequately investigated, and also with events of the present that have come too rapidly and recently to have been properly digested and understood, it is rather inevitable that I shall make some mistakes. I shall expect and hope to be corrected.” Over this time period Woodward released four separate editions, in chapter form, that modified, corrected, and responded to contemporary criticisms.

    Read More

  • Lorraine Hansbury's A Raisin in the Sun: Opening the Eyes of America to Segregation and Inequality

    1359 Words  | 3 Pages

    Weaver, Robert C. “The Negro As an American: The Yearning for Human Dignity.” The Norton

    Read More

  • Uncle Tom's Cabin: A Summer Awakening to Slavery

    1042 Words  | 3 Pages

    I never thought that I would read a book over the summer, but over the course of these past two months, that changed. Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” forever changed how I view slavery. I loved reading it. Throughout the whole novel, Stowe uses her experience and knowledge to portray the terrible hardships and struggles that slaves endured everyday. Not only does this book express the thoughts of the slaves and their faith in God, but also of the people around them. “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” wanted so badly for America to give freedom and equality for all people, and that is what I enjoyed most while reading.

    Read More

  • Symbolism In Eastman Johnson's Negro Life At The South?

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    Nature was not the only thing at risk during the Industrial Revolution. The social structure was being challenged by social justice leaders around the country. The feminist and abolition movements swept the nation, and the art scene. Artists took to showing the injustice of slavery through various paintings. Robert Duncanson’s painting Uncle Tom and Little Eva, shows the flawed logic of white supremacy. The little girl in the painting is standing while the African American man is sitting under her. This symbolizes that even though he is much older and bigger, she is in charge of him. Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South (Old Kentucky Home), shows how African Americans lived, the terrible conditions in which they lived, in the south. Art of this nature sparked the idea in many minds that the institution of slavery could not survive in a free nation. The abolitionist movement gained steam and eventually flung America into the civil war. The art that publicized these issues

    Read More

  • Summary Of The Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man

    1666 Words  | 4 Pages

    James Weldon Johnson 's book, The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, describes the journey throughout the early and midlife of a man who bore both Negro and white blood.  He 's ethnicity wise African American but is able to "pass" in American Society as white due to his fair skin.  This book examines the question of race and provides insight on what it really meant to fake an identity as a man in a culture that recognized nothing but color. In The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man, the protagonist, who is also the narrator, is never named.  In the beginning of the book he announces that he 's about to reveal "the great secret of [his] life" in hopes to analyze his motives for doing it and to also be relieved of this burden (pg. 1).  He

    Read More

  • "Passing" in James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    In 1912, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was anonymously published by James Weldon Johnson. It is the narrative of a light-skinned man wedged between two racial categories; the offspring of a white father and a black mother, The Ex-Colored man is visibly white but legally classified as black. Wedged between these two racial categories, the man chooses to “pass” to the white society. In Passing: When People Can’t Be Who They Are, Brooke Kroeger describes “passing” as an act when “people effectively present themselves as other than who they understand themselves to be” (Kroeger 7). The Ex-Colored Man’s choice to ultimately “pass” at the end of the novel has been the cause of controversy amongst readers. Many claim his choice to “pass” results from racial self-hatred or rejecting his race. Although this may be true, the main reason for his choice to “pass” is more intense. The narrator’s “passing” is an effort to place himself in a safe living environment, open himself up to greater opportunities and be adventurous and cynical in his success to fool the nation. It is because of his light skin that The Ex-Colored Man confidently knows the world will categorize him as white; thus cowardly disclaiming his black race without actually disclosing his decision.

    Read More

  • Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

    730 Words  | 2 Pages

    The narrator’s father is being freed from slavery after the civil war, leads a quiet life. On his deathbed, the narrator’s grandfather is bitter and feels as a traitor to the blacks’ common goal. He advises the narrator’s father to undermine the white people and “agree’em to death and destruction (Ellison 21)” The old man deemed meekness to be treachery. The narrator’s father brings into the book element of emotional and moral ambiguity. Despite the old man’s warnings, the narrator believes that genuine obedience can win him respect and praise.

    Read More

  • A Raisin in the Sun: The Duality of African-America, George Murchison and Joseph Asagai

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    “The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, – this longing to attain self-consciousness, manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message f...

    Read More

  • The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass: The Formation of Identity

    2136 Words  | 5 Pages

    The reader is first introduced to the idea of Douglass’s formation of identity outside the constraints of slavery before he or she even begins reading the narrative. By viewing the title page and reading the words “The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave, written by himself” the reader sees the advancement Douglass made from a dependent slave to an independent author (Stone 134). As a slave, he was forbidden a voice with which he might speak out against slavery. Furthermore, the traditional roles of slavery would have had him uneducated—unable to read and incapable of writing. However, by examining the full meaning of the title page, the reader is introduced to Douglass’s refusal to adhere to the slave role of uneducated and voiceless. Thus, even before reading the work, the reader knows that Douglass will show “how a slave was made a man” through “speaking out—the symbolic act of self-definition” (Stone 135).

    Read More

  • Myne Owne Ground Summary

    901 Words  | 2 Pages

    They argue that the accruing of property by figures such as Johnson meant that they literally did not think of themselves as living within a racist society, and that, despite the decline of this freedom, it is a mistake to consider their opinions as an “aberration” in a narrative of inevitable racial exploitation (Breen & Innes, 112). Rather, they claim that to understand such people as such an aberration inevitably leads to a situation in which the real equality of their freedom is

    Read More

  • Suffering and Struggle in Sonny´s Blues by James Baldwin

    1195 Words  | 3 Pages

    The transition of being a black man in a time just after slavery was a hard one. A black man had to prove himself at the same time had to come to terms with the fact that he would never amount to much in a white dominated country. Some young black men did actually make it but it was a long and bitter road. Most young men fell into the same trappings as the narrator’s brother. Times were hard and most young boys growing up in Harlem were swept off their feet by the onslaught of change. For American blacks in the middle of the twentieth century, racism is another of the dark forces of destruction and meaninglessness which must be endured. Beauty, joy, triumph, security, suffering, and sorrow are all creations of community, especially of family and family-like groups. They are temporary havens from the world''s trouble, and they are also the meanings of human life.

    Read More

  • The Ethics of Living Jim Crow an Autobiographical Sketch by Richard Wright

    711 Words  | 2 Pages

    Richard Wright’s autobiographical sketch, The Ethics of Living Jim Crow was a glimpse into the life of a young black man learning to navigate the harsh and cruel realities of being black in America. Through each successive journey, he acquired essential life skills better equipping him to live in a society of inequality. Even though the Supreme Court, provided for the ideology of “separate but equal” in the 1896 case, Plessy v, Ferguson, there was no evidence of equality only separation (Annenberg, 2014).

    Read More

More about Analysis Of James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man

Open Document