The Racial Inequality In Ralph Ellison's Prologue Of An Invisible Man

“There can be no gainsaying the fact that racial injustice engulfs this community,” explained Martin Luther King Jr. in his “Letter From Birmingham Jail”. King wrote this letter to clergymen as a response to their disapproval of his nonviolent protests against racial inequality. Our community is made up of a democratic society, but we are not all seen as equal. In Ralph Ellison’s “Prologue of an Invisible Man”, he explains the blindness of a society, and how he personally takes matters into his own hands dealing with inequality. When people are marginalized in a democratic society, as a citizen, it is our duty to understand and act upon the plight. To understand a problem in our society, people must get past stereotypes and learn to understand what is unjust. For example,

If a law is unjust, we need to understand that it is okay to break it. For example, King describes to us some situations where past laws were unjust, “We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was ‘legal’ and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was ‘illegal’” (4). Throughout history, these laws have been broken and overcome. People will act against something they believe is wrong; it is a consequence of a marginalized group in a democratic society. In “Prologue of an Invisible Man”, Ellison was tired of being marginalized and unseen because of his differences. The laws that marginalized him, bumped into him day after day. Ellison couldn’t take being bumped against anymore and wrote, “...out of resentment, you begin to bump people back” (37). In order for change to occur, there needs to be a driving force. He explains that he can be irresponsible because there is no driving force to keep him from being responsible. If no one recognizes him, then he doesn’t have to change. He realized that he needed to take responsibility into his own hands and make a change to be