Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison is an intriguing yet complex piece of literature that allows the reader to get sucked into a world of his nameless protagonist. I found it extremely riveting to read a story that the protagonist is invisible which lead me to question, if he is dead and  simply a ghost roaming the earth. But I soon realized that it was way more profound than a simple explanation.

In the prologue, the protagonist says, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” He is invisible because people refuse to see anything but the color of his skin, he is belittled as a human being for the color of his skin. He is trapped in a box of stereotypes and the reason he is invisible because people refuse to open their minds and accept differences in people. Ralph Ellison’s explanation of why his character is invisible is closely related to how Frantz Fanon in the beginning part of his piece explained the emergence of the triple person and the feeling of being seen. The triple person is his body, his ancestors and his race which means that not only is a person seen as one but is seen as a history of their race. Being seen and judged by others is the reason why there are differences in people and why their is a triple person. In Fanon’s and Ellison’s pieces both referenced that even though they were being watched, the attention of others in someway was validated or a liberation. Ellison uses the word invisible while Fanon simply just states that it feels like they aren’t there because they are not seen as anything else but their skin color.

Another part that I found interesting while reading the chapters was when the protagonist was in the chapel and he was either hearing the words of priest or having a moment of reflection but either way he explained the power of others. “…whom we knew though we didn’t know, who were unfamiliar in their familiarity, who trailed their words to us through blood and violence and ridicule and condescension with drawling smiles, and who exhorted and threatened, intimidated with innocent words as they described to us the limitations of our lives and the vast boldness of our aspirations…this was our world, they said as they described it to us, this our horizon and its eart….and this we must accept and love and accept even if we did not love. We must accept — even when those were absent…” I found this quite powerful in the sense that Ellison illustrates the lives of many black people during this time because not only are they not treated the same but they are also taught one way of thinking whether they want to or not. The protagonist goes to an all black university that was founded and funded by very wealthy white men which seems to me like a big scheme to keep the blacks with the blacks and not allow them to advance anywhere else. Seeing is a very crucial element which seems to run through all of the pieces we have read but seeing in the eyes and words of others closely relates to R.W Emerson’s Back to Nature. “…We, through their eyes” is exactly how Ellison would summarize this passage and would agree with how blacks are treated and taught, by being cut off from reality to make it seem like their life is the reality.

Race is racism and the sheer fact that race exists illustrates that there are differences among individuals due to the discriminatory nature of race. Whiteness is almost too powerful for anyone to handle, in the sense that if someone is recognized as white there is an immediate shift of power and privilege. I watched a video on Twitter that showed a room full of white people and the speaker asked “if you, as a white person, would like to be treated the way black people are in this society, stand” and no one stood up because they all know blacks are treated unfairly. This brings up Rankine’s “On Whiteness and the racial imaginary” piece for the reason that white writers do not know or have never experienced racism and should think over why they want to write about different races.

Rankine’s argument that white writers have is that they are allowed to write as a different race because of the imagination and that writing is an art form that transcends all races. “The imagination is a free space, and I have the right to imagine from the point of view of anyone I want—it is against the nature of art itself to place limits on who or what I can imagine.” On the contrary, white writers can not transcend race because of the notion of racial imaginary. Racial imaginary is the idea that no one is free of any biases even when in regards to the imagination because we all have images and ideas instilled in us by parents, books, movies, or even other people. The idea of the other made me think about Fanon’s piece “ The fact of blackness” when he describes of being constantly watched in society and only being seen as a skin color and nothing else.  “..To experience his being through others.” Others play an important role in Fanon’s work and it also strengthens this idea of the racial imaginary by highlighting the experiences that others have. Those experiences and memories make a lasting effect on people, so for white writers to say that their imagination has no biases is all wrong. Those experiences shape who they become and how they perceive certain things especially race. Rankine’s piece warns the reader of the dangers of whiteness and white writers ability of writing about other races with no regard to how it affects the people of that race or how the piece will be perceived. “Here we are again: we’ve made this thing and we’ve sent it out into the world for recognition—and because what we’ve made is in essence a field of human experience created for other humans, the field and its maker and its readers are thus subject all over again to race and its infiltrations. In that moment arise all sorts of possible hearings and mis-hearings, all kinds of address and redress.” This is the danger of white writers publishing works from a different perspective that is unfamiliar from their own. There could be misinformation about blacks in a certain book and it can lead to even more prejudices towards black and create more conflict. As a society we should look at the now and be more conscious of our decisions and writers should also think more in depth about how their work can affect everyone.