Revising critical judgments of The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

African American Review, Summer, 2006 by Heather Russell Andrade

There are at least four moments when authorial intrusions occur and the "intrusive" authorial posture is clearly discernible. The first occurs in that dazzling moment of racial self-awareness in which the narrator reflects upon the change that his newfound racial status has brought to his life. We recognize two distinct voices inhabiting the narrative. The ex-colored man reflects: "And this is the dwarfing, warping, distorting influence of every colored man in the United States. He is forced to take his outlook on all things, not from the viewpoint of a citizen, or a man, or even a human being, but from the viewpoint of a colored man" (Johnson 14). Robert Stepto cogently notes that in this moment "the Ex-Colored Man radically reduces" the Du Boisian concept of twoness "to a nearly grotesque oneness: the viewpoint of a colored man" (113). Yet, Johnson's qualifying social authorial voice clearly dominates the subsequent paragraph on the powerful inscrutability of blackness:

   It is a difficult thing for a white man to
   learn what a colored man really thinks;
   and his thoughts are often influenced
   by considerations so delicate and subtle
   that it would be impossible for him
   to confess or explain them to one of the
   opposite race. This gives to every colored
   man, in proportion to his intellectuality,
   a sort of dual personality; there
   is one phase of him, which is disclosed
   only in the freemasonry of his own
   race. I have often watched with interest
   and sometimes amazement even
   ignorant colored men under cover of
   broad grins and minstrel antics maintain
   this dualism in the presence of
   white men. (14)

While certainly the "observation" of the subsequent paragraph could be seen as a narratological strategy designed to bolster the preface's claim that this narrative will "draw" the "veil" "aside," the reference to the "dual personality" of the "colored man" indisputably and ideologically reflects Du Bois's theory of double consciousness. Furthermore, the notion that there are "inexpressable aspects" of African American identity distinct from white American identity invokes the very sense of fragmentation implicit in Du Bois's fabled "unreconcilable strivings" of African America. Finally, the narrator's recognition of minstrels' "wearing the mask," in other words, "black folks signifying," positions the narrator decisively within the veil as an observer who, at the very least, is an astute cultural sharer--a characterization antithetical to the general literary critical depiction of the main protagonist.

The tension between Johnson's characterization (literally, his novelistic creation of "character") and his desire to utilize his textual prerogatives as a vehicle for raising social awareness creates the proverbial double-edged sword. If he does not include "responsible" social criticism, he runs the ironic risk of his anti-hero spreading "propaganda" that will readily be imbibed by unsympathetic white readers. Yet, if he has his narrator speak perceptively about racial social issues, he robs his effort of precisely the ironic phantasmagoria of genre that makes it narratively intriguing and socially "relevant." So, in the second instance that I want to discuss, Johnson resorts to a further novelistic strategy. He utilizes another character's voice to extend his own ideological position.