This is the 100th birthday of Ralph Waldo Ellison, the author of the highly acclaimed "The Invisible Man" published in 1952, It is the story of a man who was alienated from both white people and black people, the hypocracy that compromised the very foundation on which this country was built. The plot involves the many ways the nameless character tried to break through the glass walls of invisibility by following the dictates of society that were said to lead to acceptance and assimilation into society.
Racism in the United States has a great impact on the development of a personal identity for people of color and American Africans in particular. In a society where a man is judged by the color of his skin and is regarded as a second class citizen, the not so subtle message is, there is something wrong with me; I am not good enough and I don't deserve any better.
Some of the criteria that supports this summation is that these people of color made no significant contribution to the making of this society. This means that all of the contributions he did make were attributed to someone who had nothing to do with it at all. Included in this assumption, they even changed the race and identity of people to make them white or dark white people. The ideas, production, and everything connected with creation belongs to the group who were disinfranchized. They even went so for as to change the geography and creat a new country (the near east) not North Africa.
So, if people cannot be identified then who are they, where did they come from? Everybody is identified by some land. Italians-Italy, Spain-Spanish, Greece-Greeks. What country do you know named Black? So If you are Black, you have no country , no land to attach to therefore you don't exist.
Certain groups were made to believe that education is the answer. If you were well educated, then you would be more acceptable in society. So certain groups spent decades i school, inferior or otherwise but were able to make it anyway. Some saw education as a way to distance themselves from slavery. Some reached their goal in spite of the inequities. Then they intergrated the schools and ran all of the white children away so they would feel better about destroying the public school system. President Reagan promoted tax breaks for parents to sent their children to -private schools and federal education funds to help finance the private schools.
Is the story of the Invisible man revelent today? Are there still people who circulate on the fringes of society, trying to live up to the standards imposed by society and governed by the oppressors and power-brokers of old?
