Richard Ferguson's Reviews > Invisible Man

When I read Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, I felt two opposite reactions tugging at my heart. One, that as a white man I could never truly understand the depth of invisibility felt by black people in America, particularly at that time (1930s-50s). The other reaction was that Ellison’s brutal reality check and uncompromising prose made it impossible not to try and truly understand. In contemplating what to write in this review, my legal background turned my attention to the case of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). As most Americans learned in high school, the Brown case overturned Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and held that segregation in public schools was unconstitutional. The Supreme Court ruled that the “separate but equal” lie in Plessy (which provided discriminatory practices and segregation a shield from the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause) must be finally tossed aside for the blatant falsehood it propagated. What does that have to do with Ellison’s great novel? Let me explain.
In preparation for attacking the Plessy ruling, a famous psychological experiment was conducted by Kenneth and Mamie Clark, in which black children were presented with identical dolls, differing only in skin color. The children were both male and female, and when asked which doll they preferred, most chose the white doll, saying it was “nicer”. This exposed the terrible damage inflicted upon African American children’s self-esteem by segregation and it led the researchers to conclude that “separate but equal” was inherently unequal. This doll test provided an important evidentiary component in convincing the Court to overrule Plessy.
Referring to Ellison’s Invisible Man, the terrible effects of discrimination make those that are the unfortunate recipients of such bigotry feel that their very souls are invisible to those who refuse to see them for what they are and who they are. Many humans have a problem in dealing with “otherness” and feel the need to turn their heads away and to harden their hearts in guilt for doing so. Once one’s heart is hardened, atrocities are made possible. Ellison shows us that the hearts of both perpetrators and victims are hardened in equal measure, leading to callousness and cruelty on both sides. Lose lose.
The narrator, significantly with no name, does not shy from exposing not just the heinous bigotry of white people, but also the underbelly of black life with all its own brutality and violence. He does this not to excoriate his fellow sufferers, but to make them visible, just as he is made visible to white people by reflecting back upon them their own racist injustices. Today, we all know there are many groups that are invisible, and their invisibility is a reminder that the human penchant for destroying otherness is alive and well. Ellison eloquently reminds us of the tragedy that results from our willful blindness.