The Nonconformity of the Ex-Colored Man
by Robert W. Watson
(15 March 2003)

    In his Autobiography of an Ex-colored Man, James Weldon Johnson explores the meaning of "passing" in American society. The reader never learns the name of the narrator in the novel, which suggests that he is common, yet uniquely gifted like all people; in other words, the ex-colored man represents the typical individual. Since he is the son of a black slave and a white slave owner, the ex-colored man is legally black, but as a black porter tells him, "they wouldn't know you from white."

    The crisis throughout the novel centers on the narrator's discovering his identity. The ex-colored man vacillates between black and white societies until he witnesses a lynching of a black man that ends with the man's being burned alive. He feels a two-fold shame in that the black race would allow itself to be treated worse than animals and in that his country would allow a human being to be burned alive. Because of this killing, the ex-colored man declares that he "would neither disclaim the black race nor claim the white race." He ends his days living a comfortable, but mediocre, life passing as a white man. However, at times, the ex-colored man regrets that he failed to join with the black men who were "making history and a race." But this vacillation is the very heart of the novel: classifying human beings merely by the color of skin is capricious and arbitrary. In order to reveal this capriciousness, the ex-colored man defies classifying and embodies a rampant individualism.

    First, the ex-colored man applies his individualism to learning. When reading as a small boy, the ex-colored man would bluff the listener by creating a story from the pictures in the book if the words were too difficult to read or understand. Later while attending school, the ex-colored man finds the study of history especially troublesome. The ex-colored man believes that the historical categories are restrictive: "I now began to study about the Civil War, but the story was told in such a condensed and skipping style that I gained from it very little real information." Instead of learning from a textbook, the ex-colored man relies on Stowe's novel, Uncle Tom's Cabin, in order to understand a bit more about himself and the nation's attitude toward blacks. Regarding the study of foreign languages, the ex-colored man creates "an original system of study" even though he classifies the languages as French, Spanish, and German. Because of his disregard for categories, the ex-colored man fails to distinguish between legitimate categories such as viewing the Bible like modern books when authors put "their best work in the first part, and grew either exhausted or careless toward the end."

    Second, the ex-colored man applies his individualism to music. As a very young boy, the ex-colored man preferred the black keys on the piano. At first, he did not want to be "hampered by notes." When his music teacher begins to teach him the techniques and theory of music, the ex-colored man rebels: "My music teacher had no small difficulty at first in pinning me down to the notes." The young music student would rather listen to the music and then reproduce and even improvise what he heard by ear. He admits that he was not a good accompanist on the piano because his ideas of "interpretation were always too strongly individual." Much later, as an accomplished musician, the ex-colored man shocks a gathering of socialites as he plays ragtime when the guests were expecting classical music. At first, the ex-colored man would improvise his classical music to ragtime, but then he gets the idea to improvise ragtime music to be more classical. Therefore, the ex-colored man has difficulty with accepting the "blackness" of ragtime and the "whiteness" of classical music. After his proposal of marriage is accepted, the ex-colored man takes his fiancée's place at the piano and finishes her rendition of Chopin's Thirteenth Nocturne, "involuntarily closing it with the major triad." Whether the "triad" represents the three major classes of race or points to black, white, and mulatto is immaterial. The symbolism reflects that music is not a matter of black keys or white keys, but a harmonious blending of both.

    Third, the ex-colored man applies his individualism to people. While all students reject "Red Head" because he was not very bright white boy, the ex-colored man likes him because he benefits from Red Head's "strength and dogged faithfulness." In the same classroom, the ex-colored man befriends "Shiny face," the brightest student in the class who was quick to learn, but studied hard as well. Yet, Shiny face is snubbed by the whites because he is black. One day, the white students were asked to stand and the ex-colored man rises with them. However, the teacher asks him to sit down until the "others" are asked to stand. The ex-colored man now realizes for the first time in his life that he is black, not because of the color of his skin, but because of the law. When the other black students begin to taunt the ex-colored man, Shiny face defends him and tells them to leave him alone. Even though the ex-colored man is now rejected by his classmates, Red Head and Shiny face remain his friends. On a train going to Atlanta, the ex-colored man listens with interest to the exchange between a Texan and an ex-Union soldier. At first glance, the Texan appears to be a bigot of the worst sort. However, the ex-colored man feels "a certain sort of admiration for the man who could not be swayed from what he held as his principles." When the Texan tells the soldier, "you might convince me that you're right, but you'll never convince me that I'm wrong," the ex-colored man reveals his belief that defending one's vices as strongly as one's goodness is a virtue. The Texan knows he is narrow and perhaps even wrong, but he will defend his being wrong with passion. Thus, not being hampered by classifications, the ex-colored man can appreciate the Texan's own stalwart individualism.

    Since the ex-colored man insists on applying his form of individualism to life, he sees a world where boundaries are blurred and distinctions are fuzzy. On the other hand, according to the ex-Union soldier, all of the great achievements of mankind were not produced by a single "superior" race. Indeed, today's civilization is built upon the ruins of preceding civilizations whose contributions to art, science, and politics are continually refined or redefined by later generations of people. Therefore, any apparent racial, national, or cultural superiority is illusionary. In the case of Americans, particularly white Americans, what has been perhaps mistaken as racial and world superiority, is actually divine blessings upon a people who had reverence toward and obedience to God's word. However, as Americans continue to reject the Bible as the objective standard for living and as everyone insists upon doing that which is right in his own eyes, any perceived superiority will surely disappear into oblivion like the ex-colored man's innate talents and lofty projects were sacrificed to white middle-class mediocrity. Or as the ex-colored man puts it, "I have sold my birthright for a mess of pottage."