Essay on Imperium in Imperio

“These words sank deep into my heart, stirred up sentiments within that lay slumbering, and called into existence an entirely new train of thought. It was a new and special revelation, explaining dark mysterious things, with which my youthful understanding had struggled, but struggled in vain. I now understood what had been to me a most perplexing difficulty – to wit, the white man’s power to enslave black men. It was a grand achievement, and I prized it highly. From that moment, I understood the pathway from slavery to freedom” (20).

Slavery was abolished after the Civil War, but the Negro race still was not accepted as equals into American society. To attain a better understanding of the events and struggles faced during this period, one must take a look at its' literature. James Weldon Johnson does an excellent job of vividly depicting an accurate portrait of the adversities faced before the Civil Rights Movement by the black community in his novel “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man.” One does not only read this book, but instead one takes a journey alongside a burdened mulatto man as he struggles to claim one race as his own.

Proposition(s) centered around body of works authored by African Americans often fluctuate with the social stratification of its people. The writing is not stagnant bound to warranted eons, but fluid with time, as generally as any other form of literature. In other words, African American writing tends to reflect that of the current society they are subjected to, among a number of other conditions. In the 1800's, prior to the dawning of the Civil War, Black publication, in its diminutive amount, consisted roughly of memoirs, of which recounted the perils of slavery and the bliss circumvention, in turn, creating the earliest form of Black literature, slave narratives. In their own time and thereafter, said narratives have been the object of much scrutiny of both damning and plauditory natures. The authors of the works serve as no exception to such, considering each have received perlustration from their kinsmen and their counterparts, alike. Phillis Wheatley, Olaudah Equiano, and Frederick Douglass are examples of said Black authors, being that all have been accused of spiritually fleeing their race and relinquishing their “Black” identity.

Hurston, on the other hand, lived in a town where only blacks lived until she was thirteen years old. Therefore, she only knew the “black” self. There was no second identity to contend with. She states that “white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.”2 She does not feel anger when she is discriminated against. She only wonders how anyone can not want to be in her company. She “has no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston 1712).

In the essay, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” he theorizes the concept of the “veil” and “double consciousness” to express the very distinct differences experienced by Whites and Blacks (Du Bois 1995). The veil is an imaginary barrier, the color-line, which separates Whites and Blacks. Through the veil, Blacks can

Many times blacks who are of a lighter complexion are seen as “prettier or more desireable” towards other blacks today, and as stated previously, were offered better employment opportunities. However sometimes they are shunned by whites and blacks alike and are treated as outcasts by the community due to their inability to conform to a certain ethnicity. In the book “The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man,” James Weldon Johnson depicts the fictional life of a biracial man living in the post-reconstruction era of America in the nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. In his early childhood days, the narrator frequently struggled with his personal identity after he was told to stand with the rest of his African American classmates during somewhat of an analyzation of the gender percentages by a certain staff member. “I wish all of the white scholars to stand for a moment. ‘I rose with the others, the teacher looked down at me and said ‘ You sit down for the present, and rise with the others. ‘I sat down dazed… A few of the white boys jeered me saying:’ Oh you’re a nigger too! ‘I heard some of the black children say,’ Oh, we knew he was colored, Shiny would say; ‘Come along don’t tease him, and thereby winning my undying gratitude.’” (Weldon 11) Before he was seemingly outed

On a sociological basis, the notion of race is understood as a social construction. As a black student in France, Frantz Fanon writes of how the white man has made him a “slave not of the ‘idea’ that others have of [him] but of [his]

The phrase “art imitates life” can be used to describe many works of literature. Authors and the stories they write are often influenced by the changing world around them along with the evolution of new perspectives and ways of thinking regarding a subject. While this may sound simply like a common literary trope, it is of great importance and significance in many genres of literature. None has this been more apparent than in both the anti-slavery and women’s empowerment movement of the early to mid-1800s. Two major influence authors in their respective subjects, Frederick Douglass and Fanny Fern, were heavily influenced by the changing societal trends of the time of which they expressed through their writing. Douglass’s speech in particular “What to a Slave is the 4th of July?” was heavily influenced by Douglass’s own personal experience as a slave as well as the rising prominence of the abolitionist movement in the United States. By referencing the contradictory nature of the Constitution relegating personal freedoms exclusively to white, property owning males, Douglass bluntly references the systematic inequalities faced by people of color in the United States. Never would the works of an African American author, especially one challenging the established institution of slavery, gain so much attention if not for the anti-slavery movement and shifting perspectives surrounding it.

In the "Lived Experience of a Black man" chapter, Fanon asserts his anger towards the white man because a black person 's skin color is the basis for prejudice and thus they are not the ideal human. He is annoyed that when someone mentions a physician or a teacher and they are black, the white society seems surprised that these black scholars are gentle or intelligent. His anger leads him wanting to be accepted by the white man. He writes, "Like all good tacticians I wanted to rationalize the world and show the white man he was mistaken"(Fanon 98). He feels the need to show the white man that they are mistaken about believing all the negative thoughts about black people.

In the beginning chapters of the book, we get a glimpse of the typical home and community of an African American during segregation. Many Africans Americans were too adjusted to the way of living, that they felt

African American individuals still faced inhumane discrimination and were often not looked at as people, let alone cared for or acknowledged. To anyone else, their opinions did not matter and their lives were not valued. The 1930?s was also a time in which America was being rebuilt after the detrimental effects of the Great Depression. Furthermore, there was a greater presence of African Americans in northern states, which brought about racial tension from powerful white figures who did not want African Americans in what they believed to be ?their cities?. The struggle to find jobs was present all over, and African Americans found it even more difficult to support themselves. The narrator faced all these obstacles throughout the course of this novel.

W.E.B. Du Bois writes a collection of essays on race, preferably the African American race, entitled The Souls of Black Folks. In the forethought, Du Bois lets the reader know gather together an introduction of the rest of the book. He introduces you to his concept of “the veil” Drawing from his own personal experiences, Du Bois develops a remarkable book on how the world is divided by a color line. The divide being between white and privileged, and black and controlled. I will attempt to break down the thought process of Du Bois during the entirety of this synopsis of chapters 1, 3, and 6.

Power binaries are a prevalent feature in all societies, past and present. One group in power holds the position at the top of the binary and, in doing so, pushes those who do not fit into the group to the bottom, socially and politically powerless. During the 1930’s in America, the most significant binary was the division between whites and people of color, specifically African Americans. (“Historical Context: Invisible Man”). Ralph Ellison’s novel Invisible Man explores this time period through the story of an unnamed narrator struggling to find his individual identity as a young black man in a world that is constantly holding him down. The trials and tribulations the narrator endures and the people he encounters on his journey exemplify how the imbalanced power structure of a racist society will not truly allow even successful people of color to obtain substantial power unless they twist the definition of power itself.

The African-American authors of this time period wrote stories describing life during and after slavery. Real life issues that these authors lived through and experienced through the world around them. The excerpts that we read of Booker T. Washington’s “Up From Slavery,” told a compelling tale of his life of being born into

    At first, the narrator cannot grasp that his grandfather was fighting against oppression in his work he was compliant to white men. But as he progresses as a student the denials of the system become more clear it is not clear if white men wish for him to advance or not. The narrator’s  worldview has become more