A coward and a deserter, is how Ex-Colored Man should be described. Is the ideal image of oneself to be white or does the guilt felt by the lack of self-acceptance as a colored man; cause one to question their place in society? Being of mixed race, the Ex-Colored Man lived in fear of being who he truly was, he gave up on this true passions and dreams to pass by life under a façade, he lived a mediocre life on what he felt was safe for him and his children. In the era in which the narrator sends us back to, the ideal image was to be white. As we go through his childhood, he views the racial prejudice and discrimination of blacks. He believes that he himself is a white man, even after he discovers that he is colored. “The real problem is he
