Economic Necessity and Racial Identity in The Autobiography of An Ex-Colored Man


"...the effect is a tendency toward lighter complexions, especially among the more active elements in the race. Some might claim that this is a tacit admission of colored people among themselves of their own inferiority judged by the color line. I do not think so. What I have termed an inconsistency is, after all, most natural; it is, in fact, a tendency in accordance with what might be called an economic necessity. So far as racial differences go, the United States puts a greater premium on color, or better, lack of color, than upon anything else in the world." -the protagonist (page 72)

James Weldon Johnson's first-person narrator in his fictional account, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, forwards a cynical, if not Darwinian, point-of-view about skin color. He claims it is "most natural" for black people to procreate with those who are lighter skinned. And he coolly excuses this supposedly common practice as pure economic necessity. The Black Nationalist must protest this fatalism. The Marxist simply chalks another one up for his side. What about the humanist? What is he or she to make of such unreasonable and callous tactics used to pursue the American Dream?

The sympathetic humanist might bristle at first, but would eventually concur. For it's hard to argue with poverty. At the time the novel was published (1912), America held very few opportunities for the Negro population. Some of the more successful black men, men with money and street savvy, were often porters for the railroads. In other words the best a young black man might hope for was a position serving whites on trains. Our protagonist--while not adverse to hard work, as evidenced by his cigar rolling apprenticeship in Jacksonville--is an artist and a scholar. His ambitions are immense considering the situation. And thanks to his fair skinned complexion, he is able to realize many, if not all, of them.

There is some evidence that connects our protagonist's line of thinking with his upbringing. Our protagonist's mother tells him, "The best blood of the South is in you," (page 8) when the child asks whom his father is. Clearly, his mother was proud of (and perhaps still in love with) this genteel white man who gave her a son. So his bold pronouncements make much sense in light of his own condition. His pretty and intelligent mother, and not inconsequentially, his sole parent, made her way in the world by connecting her destiny to that of a white man's.

The ability to adapt is central to "making it" in America, for all but the Indians are immigrants--some against their will, but immigrants nonetheless. Our protagonist advances such a "get along, or be gone" ethos.

"I have since learned that this ability to laugh heartily is, in part, the salvation of the American Negro; it does much to keep him from going the way of the Indian." (page 26)

Johnson's hero is ultimately practical. It makes sense to laugh in the face of horrors. It makes sense to mingle blood with the oppressor. For is there not some deeply held hope that the oppressor will stop when he realizes it's his own progeny that he oppresses?

Johnson gives the reader a complex character with motives that are seemingly at odds. He dreams of, "bringing glory and honor to the Negro race" (page 21) but in reality succumbs to the more self-serving choice to "pass" as white. His millionaire friend, who quite possible exerts the greatest influence of all on this "ex-colored man," makes the choices quite lucid.

"My boy, you are by blood, by appearance, by education and by tastes, a white man. Now why do you want to throw your life away amidst the poverty and ignorance, in the hopeless struggle of the black people of the Unites States?" (page 67)

To his credit, our hero makes a clean break with the rich white man, who himself has no direction in life. He did not fall prey to the ultimate decadence of the rich at play, nor did he achieve his childhood visions of grandeur as a great black man and credit to his race. He settles. He adapts to his conditions. He finds degrees of happiness. A happiness that frankly would not have been afforded him had he gone through life wearing his race on his sleeve.

Knowing as we do today, the multiple obstacles successfully surmounted by the black community, it is hard to accept the premise that it's "most natural" to marry a lighter skinned person in order to advance one's position in society. At the same time, it is hard to fault the desire to live a relatively happy, and by far more safe, life as a "white man."

Work Cited

Johnson, James Weldon. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man. Boston: Sherman, French & Company, 1912. Reissued by Dover Publications, 1995.

©2001 David Burn Some rights reserved