Racial Identity in The Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man Essay example

Slavery was abolished afterward the Civil War, moreover the Negro work becalm was not veritable as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles go about during this period, one must take a look at its literature. throng Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities approach before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. One does not solitary(prenominal) read this book, only instead one takes a journey alongside a burthen mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.In Johnsons novel, the young mulatto boy is at first completely unsuspecting 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, immobile learning young man whose talents do not cease at intelligence he is somewhat of a m usical prodigy. The young boys fingers could hale across the ivory keys of a piano to produce the most beautifully captivating and enchanting sounds. At school he interacted well with his classmates, scarce was always somewhat of a loner. As his education continues, he begins to gravel somewhat fascinated with a negro boy, whom he calls calendered, and begins to describe him in great detail. Shiny was smart, driven, and a quick learner, and the teller 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 go away forever follow him and essentially be the base of every ratiocination he would e... ...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 societys cruel joke, for even though he pass ed and lived as a white man, he felt constant criminality for hiding who he really was to escape the fate he was innate(p) 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 pic after being restored the original color is still underneath the outmost coating. No matter how one tries to hide it, the original product is still there.Works CitedJohnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Boston Sherman, French & Company, 1912. Reissued by capital of Delaware Publications, 1995.