Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man Essay

In the society we live in people face discrimination all the time. People are discriminated for a number of different reasons: such as being a different race, being a different color, having a low economic status and being part of a different religion. People are constantly discriminated and misjudged because we don’t look or belief in the same things. No one likes to be discriminated or judged because of our characteristics or beliefs. People will try passing as being part of a different race or religion to try to avoid being discriminated or judged. We see some of these behaviors in the book “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man” written by James Weldon Johnson. In the book, the narrator of the story is a mulatto, which is a person who was born of one white parent and one black parent. In this case the narrator is a mulatto because his dad was white and his mother was African American. The narrator takes the advantage of being a mulatto and uses that to his advantage by passing as white when it is convenient and passing as black when it is beneficial for him to do so.
In the beginning of the story the narrator is not concerned about his race. In fact he is confused with what his race is. We read about this in the story. One afternoon while the narrator is in his classroom the school’s principal comes in …show more content…
In that meeting he meet many speakers but, Booker T. Washington was the man that caught his attention the most. He was a colored man who would fight and stand up for their race. “Besides them I feel small and selfish. I am ordinarily successful white man who has made a little money. They are men who are making history and race” (99). The narrator realizes that he did nothing for his race. All he did was pass as a white man. This is definitely a disadvantage for the narrator because he had so many goals in life, but he feels like all he ever did was feel embarrassed for who he