The art of invisibility

Invisibility is the state of an object that cannot be seen. An object in this state is said to be invisible (literally, “not visible”). In the society we live in today and more importantly the society generations before us lived in we treat certain races and religions as it they are “invisible”. It’s as if we refuse to understand we our all equally important. In the Invisible man by Ralph Ellison he talks about not feeling seen just of the fact of what his race was. He says “i am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” (Prologue.1) The people around him (white people) refuse to pay any attention to him based off who he is and what color he is.

Feeling invisible can come from a place of just not how we look but simply who we are internally. People feel like there invisible because of who they are because the world around us is so judgmental. I personally know as an African American teenage girl walking into a room full of “white” people i feel like my voice and who i truly am are silenced and that part of me becomes the invisible part because they already have a preconceived image of who they think and want me to be. I also think who i am and what i look like also makes me stand out and that’s the contradicting part. When you walk into a room and you are the minority of course you feel like the odd ball out and people are looking at you. That’s just with any one but the way you deal with it and the amount of confident’s and patients you have determines how you deal with the situation. I think that’s why in the invisible man when he had the encounter with the white man and he pulled the knife out he ran out of patients and just exploded.

I think it’s important as African Americans not to feed into the stereotype it only confirms the image people already have of us. This is the part I battled the most with in the invisible man, i understood there is only so much you can take but we have to remember that society will always show the reaction and not what led up to it in the first place. We live in a society where people who have the most power are able to play the victim. We must understand that we can not contribute to the image people already have of us if we are continuously trying to break the cycle of that negative image.

Another topic that was brought up in class is does one think all cultures in society will ever be able to bridge the gap? Personally i feel like all cultures are living in the past and will always bring up the history. There will always be people who just can’t move on and will always be stuck in their ways and what they've been taught. To make matter worst in today's generation with all the white on black crimes dealing with law enforcement it only separates the gap more. It’s not only just black and white people but for example a lot of people still associate Muslim people with 9/11 and they are people just like us. yes there past has caused hurt to our society but that doesn’t mean everyone in there culture is like that. We must get rid of this idea that everyone is the same based off their religion or culture. The video below i have ties into the fact of what is going on in today's society is only dividing us more.