Search Results for: ralph ellison invisible man

Obama Was Invisible to White America

By Robin Bates | Published: August 16, 2017

A Salon article explores how some of white supremacism’s rise can be traced to rage over having had a black president. Quoting Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” it makes the case that the right couldn’t really see Obama.

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Invisible Man & Lolita Changed the ’50s

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2016

Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Nabokov’s “Lolita” both challenged basic 1950s assumptions. The former changed public perceptions on what it meant to be black while the latter violated a tacit agreement not to go digging under neatly manicured lawns bordered by white picket fences.

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Clifton, Ellison Help Explain Whitesplaining

By Robin Bates | Published: February 22, 2016

White politicians, if they want the Black vote, must be cautious about “whitesplaining.” Lucille Clifton gives us insight into the insensitivity in “note to self.” Brother Jack in “Invisible Man” is racially insensitive in this way and may have lessons for certain Bernie Sanders supporters.

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Ellison’s Elegy for Innocent Police Victims

By Robin Bates | Published: October 12, 2015

The Invisible Man’s eloquent funeral elegy for his friend Tod Clifton, shot by a policeman, could be delivered over any of the unarmed black men who have been shot by police and vigilantes in recent years. It is relevant again as the city of Cleveland seeks to blame 12-year-old Tamir Rice for his death.

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Boehner’s Monkey and Ellison’s Sambo

By Robin Bates | Published: October 11, 2015

Speaker John Boehner may keep a wind-up monkey to express how he feels jerked around by the rightwing Freedom Caucus, which prompted him to resign. There is a similar puppet in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” also signifying emasculation and humiliation.

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Bernie, Black Lives Matter, & Invisible Man

By Robin Bates | Published: October 5, 2015

Bernie Sanders’s early missteps with Black Lives Matter, which bewildered him and his followers, is explained in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”

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Invisible Men (and Women) No Longer

By Robin Bates | Published: November 24, 2014

Immigrants coming out of the shadows recall Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man, who also emerges from darkness.

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Making the Invisible Visible

By Robin Bates | Published: October 20, 2014

Tuajuanda Jordan, our college’s newest president, turned to Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man” to articulate her vision for the future.

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Trayvon Was an Invisible Man

By Robin Bates | Published: July 15, 2013

The racial profiling at the heart of the Trayvon Martin killing is captured nowhere better than in Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man.”

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