Review Of James Weldon Johnson's Autobiography Of An Ex-Colored Man

In James Weldon Johnson’s novel, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man, it is told from the first person point of view of the anonymous narrator. The narrator with an African American mother and a white father, has to overcome many racial obstacles because he does not know which race side to choose. He goes back and forth between the races all while going from the South and moving North. Johnson’s dialect throughout the novel establishes the main theme and the central conflict of racial identity, as well as art and culture, racism, and coming of age. Throughout Johnson’s novel, he establishes the main theme of racial identity because the narrator does not know which race he wants to be considered. The narrator in the novel has a complicated

The narrator classifies African Americans into three classes after his “observations…made in Jacksonville,”(Johnson 35), of African Americans through his journey of life. He considers the lowest class of colored people as “the desperate class,”(Johnson 35), which includes “[workers of] the lumber and turpentine camps, ex-convicts, [and] bar-room loafers”(Johnson 35). He mentions that this class “hate[s] everything covered by a white skin,”(Johnson 36), and that they “are truly desperate [because the] thoughts of death… have little effect in deterring them from… hatred,”(Johnson 36). The second class of blacks he sees as the “domestic [class],”(Johnson 36) and include “the servants, the washer-women, the waiters, the cooks, the coachmen, and all who are connected with the whites…”(Johnson 36). The narrator states that this class “may be called the connecting link between whites and blacks,”(Johnson 36), and that “there is little or no friction. [between the two races]”(Johnson 36). The narrator’s consideration of the third class includes “the independent workmen and tradesmen, and… educated colored people,”(Johnson 36) and he refers to them as the rich and well educated. He mentions that this class is “as far removed from the whites as the members of the first class [he] mentioned.”(Johnson 36). The narrator's thoughts of the “desperate class” is viewed as disappointed or