We now turn to the literary piece of the 1960s. I purposely selected Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man because I want to turn your attention to really that other half of what I think is going on in the 1960s. Why does he call his book The Invisible Man?
Well, he gives us an answer right at the beginning of the text. He says the following, this is right at the beginning of the prologue on page 3, he says, I am an invisible man. No, I'm not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe, nor am I one of your Hollywood movie ectoplasms.
I'm a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids, and I might even be said to possess a mind, but I am invisible. Understand why. Because people refuse to see me. People refuse to see me.
Now, our expectation is that people, when they see the world and they look around them, will have the right perspective on the world. They'll ask, Goldwater just suggested or Hartz has suggested, they'll have a clear conception of what justice is. But what if their justice only applies to some human beings but does not apply to other human beings? What if justice is relegated for some other beings to a whole other picture of the world?
This is Ellison's complaint and the example that he uses in this prologue is really interesting. This is what just happens to him when he's walking out one night. He's walking out one night and some person who's drank too much barrels him over. Barrels him over as if he's not even there. Why is he barreled over?
What's going on in that individual's mind who's a drunk? He looks at another man and he says, it doesn't matter to me if I knock over a black man because a black man is not my equal. Now, Ellison says, this drove him, rightly, to great rage.
Why would you look at me, a man of flesh and bone just like you, but not recognize me as a human being? And what's it going to take for me to get you to recognize me as a human being? This really becomes the important theme of these last three lessons, the lesson that we're going to study here with Ellison. And then as we move to Malcolm X and finally to Martin Luther King Jr., each of these three authors have experienced something like Ellison.
where they haven't been granted the dignity of a human being because someone doesn't see them as visible. Someone doesn't see their rights as visible. So what is Ellison's answer by the end of this prologue?
What does Ellison say he needs to do in order to gain his visibility? Is he going to put lights up all around him so that people can see him? Well, the answer is no. The answer is, and this is on page 14, what I need to do To overcome my invisibility is I need to make people see me.
This great line, all sickness is not unto death and neither is invisibility. I can hear you say, what a horrible, irresponsible bastard. And you're right. I leap to agree with you.
I'm one of the most irresponsible beings that has ever lived. Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility. Any way you face it, it is denial.
But to whom can I be responsible and why should I be when you refuse to see me and wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am? Responsibility rests upon recognition and recognition is a form of agreement. What Ellison is telling us there is in order to become visible, he must be recognized.
And in order to be recognized, he must imprint himself upon the man that barreled into him. He must take out his knife and let that man see him for who he is. What Ellison is suggesting in this piece is that perhaps the only way to be visible is to assert yourself, to assert your humanity. Really, he sees this as a challenge, but one that he as an African American must take up. Now, I want to quickly then turn your attention to the second piece that I assigned in Ellison's book, Chapter 2. There you see this beautiful scene of a college and Allison at that time the narrator is a student at this college and here he drives a donor around and he's talking to the donor and the donor says something really really interesting to the young black man.
He says you know why I give money to this college? I give money to this college in the memory of my daughter because I want to do right by you people and the narrator takes up that idea you want to do right by my people. So you see me as someone that you can help out.
You don't see me as someone who's an end in myself. You see me as an instrument to memorialize your daughter. So all of your plans for me, don't take me into account as a man.
I am just a thing to you. It's a different type of invisibility, but it's invisibility nonetheless. And this is gonna be the story of what Allison expresses throughout his journey through his life. That African Americans must make themselves visible, they must make themselves visible by truly being recognized.
And that's only something that they can do on their own. Thank you.