Invisible Man Research Paper

Racism has long been a serious problem in many populations. While being nothing short of omnipresent in the past and present, racism varies in its intensity according to time and place, making it a complex and rather dynamic phenomenon. Although racism has been the subject matter of political action, government intervention and research, this country remains far from equity. Evidently, much of the issue actually lies in the practical responses and strategies that deal with racism. That of which can obviously not be single-handedly undertaken in this paper, but rather used to set the scene for further discussion and contemplation of current racial discrimination in this country, and hopefully achieve constructive thinking and discernment in …show more content…
In his book, Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison presents the idea of racism in America as a soul-searching process that emcopasses all the baffling experiences the Black Man has to endure. In a story that powerfully emcopasses the hardships and tensions of the road to self-discovery, the narrator loses himself and begins to become an invisible man, just as African Americans had been rendered nearly invisible in a society that sees all white. In Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates presents a letter to his son specifically revolving around the embodied state of blackness, placing an emphasis on the stolen bodies of African Americans during slavery. Coates also considers the logic of white supremacy and goes as far as presenting society as a dogma laid down by the ruling order, which, he argues, is what whiteness represents. Whiteness has emerged under various, more serious forms, threatening not only minorities, but also the inner weaving of our interrelationships and the framework of …show more content…
A time that primarily consists of the deprivation of fundamental rights of men and women originally coming from Africa; a total dehumanization of fellow beings. As Coates emotionally talks of history and haunting of the past, he urges his son—and most probably his readers—to “never forget that for 250 years black people were born into chains” (Coates 70). Such a vivid image is able to convey an important message, truly establishing enslaved peoples as prisoners of their own bodies, taken by the White Man. Just as with Coates and potentially all African Americans, slavery’s cut is one so deep in Invisible Man’s protagonist’s mind and conscience that he is established as “the descendant of slavery and heir to its fragmenting, depersonalizing, repressive nuances, thereby uncovering the utterly sadistic nature of neocolonial violence” (Fonteneau 3). While not slaves in a physical sense, blacks are poisoned by the ideology of slavery. Both literally and figuratively, African Americans all are descendants of slavery. It still burns a lingering fire, leaving those affected by it “confronted—suddenly, violently—with the ghosts of the past” (Hagan 60). With such leavings experienced by its present-day citizens, the United States of America remains unique in that it was “a country born with a terrible birth defect, slavery, but still a work in progress”(Hill 37). Living with the weight of the past may even

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