Looking On The Outside In It Ecstasy Analysis

African Americans are commonly referred to as oppressed by systematic, outright and sub-conscious racism that derives from slavery which continues to be manifested in the current age through mass-incarnation, police brutality, and discrimination experienced in the workplace as well as on college campuses. Our televisions are plagued by recent incidents such as the murdering of Michael Brown and Trayvon Martin, as well as overt racism on the campus of the University of Missouri, and the brutal beating of Freddie Gray while in police custody. It seems as if there is another police brutality incident every week. It has provoked people like Frank Wilkerson to say, “We don’t hate police brutality, we hate the police.” Looking on the outside in it

The state of ecstasy experienced in the black culture is special, but it is often hard to locate because it is overshadowed by the excess of racism and objectification of African Americans by white Americans. White Americans commonly view themselves as enlightened subjects who live in a civil society. While they have such high views for themselves; they usually think the opposite of African Americans. They view blacks as objects and slaves. They associate blackness as negative and whiteness as pure. However, this is only one way of looking at the states of blackness and whiteness. W.E.B Du Bois addresses this epidemic when she introduces the term of double consciousness and expresses its benefits. Double consciousness is the ability to be able to viewed in two different

One primary reason for this can be equated to the fact that the narrator does not embody the concept of double consciousness. He has allowed for the overt racism and societal barriers that have been placed on him to affect how he views himself and lives his life. The title alone speaks to the narrator’s lack of self worth due to the lack of worth given to him by the other. The view of the other has taken over his own view and this proves to be problematic. Even if the author is being ironic with the term invisible man, the author becomes drowned out by the term which causes him to view his life through the perspective of the other. This causes a lack of self definition which is expressed and this is evident when the narrator says, “Or again, you often doubt if you really exist. You wonder whether you aren’t simply a phantom in other people’s mind.”(pg. 4, Ellison). This is an example of the narrator allowing the other to pollute his perspective to the point where he cannot even define himself which forces him to question his own aliveness. On the contrary, Kendrick Lamar, a contemporary rapper, continues to define himself regardless of how he is viewed. He shows this in The Blacker the Berry when he says, “You’re fuckin’ evil I want you to recognize that I’m a proud monkey.”(Kendrick Lamar, The Blacker the Berry). At first, it appears as if he has taken on the