Not this, not that

Johnson’s text is making an impression which is distinct from the other two we’ve digested up to now, because of its subject matter. The idea of the “fair-skinned negro” is an interesting one, very vast and complicated. These are the people who can, when they wish to, pass for white (or at least, close to white). Even those who aren’t as light-skinned as the protagonist of this work still gain more respectability in the world of the dominant whites than would someone with extremely dark skin.

But there’s a lot more to it than that.

I know that in modern culture, it’s believed that a division currently exists within the African-American race (this is all sociological theory), as the lower-class blacks resent the higher-class ones, saying that they are somehow inauthentic, “less black.” I couldn’t hope to proffer any kind of personal experience here, but I’ve seen some examples of this odd behavior, an insistence on the seperation between black culture and white culture by blacks. August Wilson cetainly seems to believe there is something that must stay separate, symbolized by the piano which ought to remain in black possession at all costs.

The mixed-race individual is certainly not accepted by the whites, but it would seem that he might be unacceptable to black groups as well. Example: why was there no place in The Souls of Black Folk which explicitly stated that DuBois was mixed-race? It was hinted at, certainly, and whenever his lineage came up in the introduction or footnotes it became vaguely clear, but how come it was never blatantly stated? Well, DuBois already has some things going against him if he’s trying to write about the lower-class black man of 1903; he’s a Northerner, he’s Harvard-educated so he probably isn’t exactly poor, and he’s a hypocritical anti-Semite (which the readers of the time might not have cared about…). Admitting his mixed heritage might have been a coffin nail, which would explain why it’s never mentioned, and why even the editors never note it.

Back to the text at hand. We see the protagonist of Johnson’s novel having his heritage hidden from him at the beginning, and once it is revealed he sets himself away from the other children, becoming a loner, a race of one. He seems to be accepted by no one, and I am interested to see if the trend continues in his college life.

For every positive, there lie a host of negatives lurking in the shadows and greedily licking their lips.