By
John W. Fountain
“I am an
invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe …I
am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me…” -Ralph
Ellison, "Invisible Man" (1952)
I am not invisible. I am a shadow. People react not to me, but to the exaggerated
image of me; to the two-dimensional shadow that is every black man. That is why white people with whom I have worked,
people with whom I have laughed and joked and traded stories, have sometimes passed
me on the street and not recognized me. Out of context, out of safe
surroundings, I am but one among a cast of dark shadows.
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I am always a suspect. American menace. Most feared. Most hated.
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