Passing as autobiography: James Weldon Johnson's 'The Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man.'

African American Review, Spring, 1996 by Donald C. Goellnicht

The interrogative dialogue inherent to parody also extends to Johnson's signifying on nineteenth-century black travel literature. As I observed above, the fugitive slaves wrote glowingly of the lack of racism they perceived in Europe, proclaiming that they felt more liberated there than they had ever felt at home; but their sense of "freedom" was purchased at the cost of their cultural heritage: They could "prove" their black humanity only by conforming to European standards of "civilized" behavior. Douglass himself unwittingly points to the ideological contradictions of the British abolition movement. On the one hand, British abolitionists make excessive claims to being interested in Africans, their exotic Other; Douglass wryly comments: "It is quite an advantage to be a n - r here. I find I am hardly black enough for British taste, but by keeping my hair as woolly as possible I make out to pass for at least half a Negro at any rate" (Life and Writings 136). For political reasons, the abolition movement wants its representatives to appear biologically to be the essence of "pure" Negroness/blackness; but they also wish to dispel the threat of difference so that Douglass, Brown, Ward, and the other black "representatives" must in their behavior measure up to the standards of "educated," "civilized" Europeans, even though they are made constantly to feel the impossibility of measuring up.(23) The African Other must be discovered to be the same as the European Self; any distinct African American traits must be eradicated. Johnson's text makes explicit this imperative to cultural hegemony by taking assimilation to its ultimate extreme: The Ex-Coloured Man is no longer black when he passes for white in Europe, the very origin of "cultured" behavior. His millionaire employer, who has educated, clothed, and nurtured him, has, in the words of the narrator, "made me a polished man of the world" (104). Unlike Douglass, he does not need to pass for black in Europe because he can, by virtue of his successful mimicry, pass for white. Ironically, Johnson's narrator still recognizes and clings to a distinct African American culture when he plays ragtime, but again this difference must be assimilated: He will return to the American South not to learn black music for its own sake, but to follow the example of the German musician who "had taken ragtime and made it classic" (103; cf. 108), in a reflection of his own cultural "progress." Johnson's novel uncovers the cultural imperialism implicit in much of the travel writing of fugitive slaves, thereby throwing into doubt the optimistic views expressed there.

Parody has the ability, then, to call into question the integrity of the original text by interrogating the boundaries between "original" and "copy" on thematic grounds; it can also challenge hierarchies of genre or what Derrida calls "the law of genre." According to Derrida,

As soon as the word "genre" is sounded, as soon as it is heard, as soon as one attempts to conceive it, a limit is drawn. And when a limit is established, norms and interdictions are not far behind. . . . Thus, as soon as genre announces itself, one must respect a norm, one must not cross a line of demarcation, one must not risk impurity, anomaly or monstrosity. (203-04)