A White Man's Short Story: Alone

A sentence from someone may mean one thing, but an action can have a million different meanings behind it so which one would you judge a person from? Many people experience fear and are scared to face them, so instead of standing up against it they just decide to be a new person. Their minds are manipulated to not face their anxiety and are frightened about what will happen to them. People think that being fearful of something and to overcome it is a difficult task. People often mistaken their strength to fight their fear and decide to give up. Both stories, “Quicksand” and “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” share the common theme of how they use fear as an excuse to escape to a new world, they become a different person and get rid of

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”.

The innkeeper shrugged the comment away. “Last night has me thinking,” he said, “Wondering what we could do to make things a bit safer around here. Have you ever heard ‘The White Riders’ Hunt’?”

In “Going to Meet the Man” by James Baldwin the reader opens up with a scene that is considered one of the most horrific torture and murder scenes in history; or of the 1940’s. The story is so graphic that it takes you away from the main idea of racism, hatred and murder. Nevertheless, the theme of the story is a transformation of a young child into a stereotypical Black Southern-American hating bigot. Through dramatic detail Baldwin explains the mindset of a white southern police officer and how he came to hate Black-Americans. This was representative of the racial, violent black South because this exemplified what happens to most white-Americans and how they are brained washed unknowingly to hate anyone that does not resemble the same

Of the many concepts Virginia Woolf has made in her works, the idea of “moments of being” in her autobiography, “A Sketch of the Past,” is of special interest because of its possible applicability to other works of literature which focus on the composition of life. After reading the fictitious “Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” by James Weldon Johnson, one could wonder how Woolf’s concept is evident or not so evident in Johnson’s narration in order to test the concept’s applicability. Well, Johnson’s moments of clarity or “being” seem to be reminiscent of Woolf’s own “moments of being” in the way their senses interacted with the memories and the manner with which those memories are presented,

In the 1920’s during the Harlem Renaissance, the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man was first published anonymously, and later published by the author, James Weldon Johnson. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, grapples with the concept of modernism by questioning the idea of reality, form, and introducing the notion of an unreliable narrator. While, the title of the book refers to the work as an autobiography, the book is actually a work of fiction that ‘passes’ as an autobiography, similar to the concept of the book. In the Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the book follows an unnamed narrator whose born into a black household and struggles with his own racial identity. The narrator pulls racial notations and white supremacist ideals into his own idea of blackness causing him to struggle with internalized hatred towards his own race. With the death of his mother, the narrator is no longer tethered to his black identity, he leaves home and is able to effectively pass into the white world due to his lack of family relations. The narrator’s decision to pass becomes intertwined with his experience of watching a lynching occur. After the Reconstruction Era, Ida B. Wells, an African American journalism, released an Anti-lynching pamphlet during the 1890s, theorizing the various effect of lynching. Her 1st pamphlet, titled Southern Horrors, shows the history of lynching and the reasons why African American can be lynched. While, her 2nd pamphlet, shows vivid descriptions of lynchings because she wants the reader to witness to atrocity occuring (James 8). In her pamphlet, Wells writes, “Lynching was not simply a spontaneous punishment for crimes but an act of terror perpetrated against a race of people in order to maintain power and control” (Wells 3). Using Wells’ theorizes about lynching as a tool, what can be examined with the narrator’s decision to pass after experiencing a lynching?

Today, the African American community has a very definitive, restrictive singular story, and though this story might be correct about some members of the community, it is not for others. Adichie reminds us that the African American stereotype and singular story, although possibly true, is very incomplete and makes one story become the only story about a group of people. Personally, I have been lucky enough to have experienced many different social and economic situations, and in every place I have been, I have met many different African Americans. Not once have I encountered an African American who were the same and who definitely fit their singular story.

In both Berthold Brecht’s The Good Person of Szechuan and James Weldon Johnson’s The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, the main characters struggle to stay true to themselves and do the “good thing” in their respective worlds, which are intrinsically evil (or at the very least not good). The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man’s narrator struggles concern his identity, and whether he belongs in the white-man’s world or the black-man’s. The Good Person of Szechuan is about the main character’s attempts to be the sole person with virtue and her struggles with the unvirtuous world. The purpose of this essay is to compare and contrast the two works and their respective core themes and messages.

Having claimed my baggage, looking around at the strange faces, I found a seat and gingerly sat down. Cold and exhausted at midnight in an unknown city, I never had the feeling of being exiled after sixteen hours’ journey from my country to the entirely unfamiliar state because it seemed that the whole world totally changed and the only person who knew me was myself. Starring at every word on the arrival screen and listening to the broadcast carefully, I was afraid that I might miss some important information. Faced with the people here, my brain ran so quickly and could not even say a complete sentence, it seemed to have listening exercises all the time, and I had to focus on people’s dialogue to guess the meaning. It was really striking. To be honest, if I was a stranger, I might not be that kind, and I wondered it was probably the same with Americans because I was just a stranger. However, something warmhearted really happened. And it was the first time when I, as an absolute stranger, witnessed the kindness of the people in America and how it influenced me in my later life.

The latter half of 19th century America is often viewed as an era of prosperity in the nation’s history. However, during this period certain populations of people, essentially everyone aside from white males, experienced varying degrees of oppression. Women were among the more severely oppressed, being forced into the role of a home’s chef and maid; those who went against the social norm were outcasted. Kate Chopin displays discontent with this social construct in her short story The Story of an Hour.

As he walked to Air Force One, President Obama draped his arm around his daughter Malia’s back. She accompanied him on a recent trip to Chicago and Los Angeles, and he seemed giddy to have her along, smiling broadly as they walked through drizzling rain.

I went forward, and ordered the chain to be hauled in short, so as to be ready to trip the anchor and move the steamboat at once if necessary. ‘Will they attack?’ whispered an awed voice. ‘We will be all butchered in this fog,’ murmured another. The faces twitched with the strain, the hands trembled slightly, the eyes forgot to wink.

The white men seemed to appear out of no where. Like the Gods sent them here from the heavens, maybe as a test or a gift for our loyalty. The day they arrived started off normal, as the chief i always walk the village first thing in the morning and then walk to the beach by myself before anyone else awakens. When I got to the beach I saw what seemed to be a giant canoe with great white sails atop of it. Soon it got closer then stopped and smaller canoes were sent from the giant one. My fear grew as they got closer and soon after I ran back to the village to warn the others. We hid as the white men came ashore they rummaged our village before they left. I truly hope they do not return tomorrow.

I feel so depressed and melancholy when my daughter Whitey was in a coma because of a car accident in Indiana. I got more depressed as the days passed by. My older daughter has been taken care of her in the hospital, thinking that she was my daughter. I always hope she will be back in motion. It's was unbelievable where I came to know that my daughter Whitey was killed in an accident and buried by my friend's family by mistake. As days passed by, I felts so emotionally and mentally sad.

Rudyard Kipling’s 1899 poem “The White Man’s Burden” epitomizes the European man’s view on imperialism, Euro-centrism and social Darwinism. Four centuries before 1899, such ideas were briefly hinted in the letter from Christopher Columbus to King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella, however by 1899 these attitudes strengthened and developed fully into their complete meaning. The U.S and Europe’s imperialism in the nineteenth century were the most influential ever in the history of human civilization. The immense motive for imperialism came from social factors including religion and Social Darwinism.