Racial Stereotypes In Ralph Ellison's The Invisible Man

“Don’t judge a book by it’s cover.” “Don’t knock it until you try it.” Both are mantras that are usually attributed to people who are being pushed to read or try something that is unknown or daunting. The point is that a person can only assess and make a fair judgement about something until they have experienced it for themselves. Unfortunately, it seems that these cliched sayings do not apply to racial interactions outside of their comfort zones. Sometimes even before one becomes part of society people 's perception of them become warped and altered. The reason being is that is the institutionalization of racial stereotyping and misrepresentation in media further oppress minorities such as blacks and muslims. These two concepts fuel racial profiling, job …show more content…
Ralph Ellison author of The Invisible Man uses many stereotypes to show the progression of his main character’s experience in a racist era. In Chapter 10 of the piece the narrator encounters the age old stereotype that blacks are bad and if you are not white then your not right. When he encounters the company Liberty Paint he begins to realize the numerous underlying stereotypes that are portrayed. One instance includes the moment when the narrator is mixing white paint and he realizes, “But I had a feeling that something had gone wrong, something far more important than the paint; that either I had played a trick on Kimbro or he, like the trustees and Bledsoe, was playing one on me.”(Ellison 158) He begins to realize that the paint isn’t actually the paint but displays the white people. He later confirms it when he also sees that the when the black paint drips though they precede the paint it is completely engulfed. As a result he begins to internalize the stereotypes that whites are superior and the black paint becomes invisible which in turn makes him accept it at this point in the story. Ellison proves the dangers of playing to the