feotakahari

For the educationally deprived among us, the title character of Invisible Man calls himself that because people don’t see him. They can see that a person is present where he is, but they see that this person has dark skin, so they perceive a Black Man. They ascribe to this person the traits and qualities they assume all Black Men must have, and they interact with him as they would interact with any Black Man. Not all of them see the same Black Man or expect the same things from him, but they all have expectations he won’t or can’t match.

The ways in which he, and other black men, negotiate this space of invisibility are varied and sometimes self-defeating. Sometimes he plays along with other people’s expectations so he can benefit from them, while other times, he goes against his own desires just to avoid being stereotypical. People he trusts use him, betray him, or simply fail to understand what he’s trying to express, and every time he thinks he’s found a life and a purpose, it’s yanked away. In the end, the story itself is his purpose, because by telling it, he can hopefully make you understand him and see him as he is.

(It’s a side topic, but the character who fascinates me the most is Sybil, an innocent, wholesome young woman who’s completely divorced from the fact she has a libido. Bad girls want sex, and she’s not a bad girl. But her perception of a Black Man is a physically powerful rapist, so if she hangs around Black Men enough, maybe one of them will rape her and she’ll be helpless to stop him. She’s built so many walls that could easily be broken if she were willing to ask for and openly enjoy sex, but she’s not a bad person or someone who intentionally causes harm. The narrator even likes her, though he doesn’t have it in him to play along with her delusions.)

Anyway, this is why I talk so much about invisibility in the context of bigotry, and why I think the root of so many problems is the failure to understand that another person truly exists. A lot of arguments I see, on Tumblr and elsewhere, are based in the idea that *Outgroup* can be boiled down to one or two simplistic archetypes that act or think identically and should be treated identically. But people exist beyond archetypes, and if you don’t observe them on an individual level, there are a lot of things you’re never going to perceive.