Ralph waldo ellison and views about race

"Son, you must understand, you've got to understand" echos the words of a mother in the story "Boy on a Train." The mother wants her son to understand his role in life, his identity. For many African-Americans, understanding one's own identity is vital for survival. However, during many times in history race has been an unescapable element of identity for African Americans.

Several of Ellison's stories refelct how race has and does play a major role in the identity of African Americans. One influence of race is that it teaches blacks to undermine their own self-worth as it imposes limitations of what one could do in life: what goals blakcs can set for themselves. In "That I Had the Wings," Riley

tells Aunt Kate how he wishes to be a president. Aunt Kate focuses on how improbable that goal is by saying that Riley has to "live right while...young" and how she taught Riley better than to be a "blakc chile whut's got no better

Similarly, whites also used race to limit the goals and wishes of blacks, or a game in which

the father in "The Black Ball" states that his son will "play with the ball...he would play until he grew sick of playing..." (121) The man in "King of the Bingo Game" realizes this as he states that "not everyone played the bingo game; and even with the five cards he didn't stand much of a chance." (126) In this case, the bingo game is a metaphor for the involvement of race in the lives of blacks. Ellison continues this metaphor as he states how the man faces a game which "had always been there...handing out the unlucky cards and numbers." (128) The man "felt a profound sense of pormise, as though he were about to be repaid for all the things he'd suffered all his life." (129) "Flyiong Home" provides another example in which whites would refuse to let Todd see combat actions as they "keep beating that dead horse because they don't want to say why you boys are not yet fighthing." (150)

Although whites provided the primary source of black limitation, there were also interracial tensions as well. As the man in "King of the Bingo Game" explains, "All the Negroes down there were just ashamed because he was black like them...Most of the time he was ashamed of what Negroes did himself. Well, let them be ashamed for something this time." (132) Todd in "Flying Home" faces a more direct impact of "interracial racism" as he knows that "they never accept your mistakes as your own but hold it against your own race--that was humiliation...when you could never be simply yourself, when you were always a part of this old ignorant black man." (150)

Although "racial predicaments" did define a great deal of the identity of the black characters of Ellison's novel, their "will, ambition and exasperatingly personal tastes" also defined them as well. For example, Ellison's characters often realize that race did not have to play a role in their own personal growth. The story "A Coupla Scalped Indians" illustrates this as Buster and Riley undergo Boy Scout type rituals and "one kind of operation no woman gets to brag about" in order to grow as adults. Riley goes through a "rite of passage" in which ghe peeks at Aunt Mackie while she undresses, a woman who was "a threat of a different order" who he "paid...the respect of fear." (69) Riley soon develops like adolescents often do, as he starts speaking in sexual terms as he had seen "a few calendar drawings" and describes Aunt Mackie as "A brown naked woman...the long graceful curves of her back..." Aunt Mackie catches Riley and informs him that he "passed all the tests" and forces him into sexual acts like kissing and touching. Like a person who loses his virginity, Riley learns that nudity and sexuality were not forbidden issues as "nakedness was nothing more than another veil." (79) This experience represents a milestone in Riley's life since he grows older as he "had lived swiftly long years into the future..." (80) The vital importance of this example is that Riley grows through the "rites of passage" of circumcision and the dealings with Aunt Mackie independent of his race. Riley was able to grow through his "ambition" to "pass all the tests" to reach adulthood.

In "I Did Not Learn Their Names" and "The Black Ball," Ellison's characters soon learn that their identity is not totally composed of being black, but other characterisitcs. The man in "Names" illustrates this point as he says that "Saying sir was too much a part of knowing your place. I had learned that on the road you really had no place; you were all the same..." (93) The father in "The Black Ball" agrees with this view as his son asks, "Daddy, am I black? ..Brown's much nicer than white, isn't it Daddy?...American is better than both, son..." In this case, the father is telling his son that the labels of black and white are not so important ot defining one's own personal identity.l

Ellison's characters not only learn tha tthey can grown beyond the labels of "black" and "white" but they also take actions that show how they determined their own identity. One example is from "King of the Bingo GAme" in which the man equates the bingo wheel (and not his race) with his identity, as "he knew, even as he wondered, that as long as he pressed the button, he could control the jackpot. He and only he could determine whether or not it was to be his." (130) This sense of identity with the bingo wheel is a very strong feeling for the man since he struggled to keep the wheel spinning evne though "they had him...he was wrestling and trying ot bring his knees into the fight and holding on to the botton, for it was his life..." (135) In "Flying Home" the old man Jefferson illustrates a similiar degree of "will and ambition" as he describes how he tried to make his own identity known in heaven since "...if Gof let you sprout wings you oughta have sense enough not to let nobody make you wear something that gits in the way of flyin'...I had to elt eve'body know that old Jefferson could fly good as anybody else." (158) In "Flying Home," Todd also shows similar aspirations as a young child he thought that "Some little white boy's plane's done flew away and all I got to do is streatech out my hands and it'll be mine!..." (104) Even as an older man, Todd still pleas for the same desire to identify himself as a good pilot, as "we can hope to be eagles, can't we?" (161)

To this extent, through many of Ellison's stories, characters learn to search for their "genuine identity" by seizing opportunities and by defining themselves beyond their own "racial predicaments" but as goal-seeking individuals who can determine their own identity.