Ralph Ellison’s Politics of Integration

Abstract In an essay called “‘.As White as Anybody’: Race and the Politics of conting as Black,” the literary critic Ken Warren has askedr or not we ought to continue to count Ellison as a Negro or lack writer” (714). Warren makes his claim unaudaciously and it is suggestive to consider that a significant-arguably the significant-professional achievement for black American writers is the suspension of their ethnicity. Contemporary biology has dismissed the logic of racial essence, but social determinations of the racial situation continue to make the suspension or temporary erasure of blackness an achievement of consequence. While the goal here is not perhaps to become white (in fact, an argument could be made that transferring racial positions would make the result meaningless), the shift in basic assumptions that occurs when a ‘black” writer can shake off the burden of race and publish as a “writer” continues to afford important cultural power and legitimacy. William Faulkner bluntly recognized this process in 1955. He said to an audience in Japan, “Ellison has talent and so far he has managed to stay away from being first a Negro; he is still first a writer.” Faulkner’s comment was considered an unambiguous measure of praise; it was used on Ellison’s book jackets as advertisement.