Racial Disparity In Invisible Man Essay

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Painting White on Black: Ellison’s Message on Racial Disparity in Invisible Man Invisible Man, the 1952 novel by Ralph Ellison, chronicles the life of an unnamed protagonist in 1940’s America. Using a descriptive autobiographical style, Ellison weaves a powerful view of America through the experiential lens of a young African-American man, from a young boy headed off to college in the American South, to his present life, that of a recluse, living in the basement of an abandoned building. After his expulsion from college for driving an important white benefactor to places that shocked and disgusted the dignitary, the ‘invisible man’ secures his first job in New York, working for a paint manufacturer. As the narrator enters Liberty Paints, racism glares him in the face, drips from the sign reading, “Keep America Pure With Liberty Paints,” and gleams in its trademark “Optic White” paint. Soon after he enters the plant, the narrator meets his boss, and after their short interaction, enters into a state of deep contemplation, where his thoughts illustrate a broader message, one regarding the social, economic, and political status of …show more content…
Kimbro, “a flunkey, a northern redneck, [and] a Yankee cracker” (Ellison 155). Kimbro represents the racist, white demographic in Northeastern America, those who step on the black populous and ride them towards the American Dream as addressed by Ta-Nehisi Coates in his novel Between the World and Me, writing, “the Dream rests on our backs, the bedding made from our bodies” (Coates 11). One of the other boys working refers to Kimbro as a “slave driver.” Indeed, the protagonist picks up on Kimbro’s racial bias through his disrespectful tone and demeanor towards him. Even a response to a simple, honest question cames as, "‘You damn right I know,’…‘You just do what you're told!’" (Ellison
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