The Whitening of Souls: A Note on Shame, Internal Monologues, and White HegemonySay no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay In The Autobiography of an Ex-Black Man by James Weldon Johnson, the unnamed protagonist lives his life walking the line between black and white. He is a man who can choose to be a person of color, or he can “pass” as a white man, and as is clear from the title, he chooses the life of a white man. But even as he grapples with the idea of ​​choosing a race, he is naturally inclined to elevate whites and subtly discriminate against blacks. These events take place in his internal monologue despite him knowing internally that he is black. While this could be seen as a betrayal of one's race, the text confirms the reality that the hegemony of the white population is so pervasive that it also alters the standards and feelings of the black community within it. The narrator's feelings are only a reflection of his world. Even as a child, the narrator falls into patterns of discrimination against other black children. He recounts naturally siding with white children in elementary school and an event where he "ran after [black children] hitting them with rocks" (10). Discovering that he himself is black is a moment of considerable anguish for him, an awareness that he will remember clearly for the rest of his life. Having reached this conclusion he knows that he cannot continue to associate with white cliques, but for the moment he also refuses to associate with black children. He acquires a tendency to dissociate from people of color surprisingly early in life. Even later in life, he continues to denigrate people of color in more subtle ways. In the Club, the romantic interest of the white widow who frequents the place is referred to as "the bad man" and a "gruff black despot" (89) without him being known personally. When our narrator travels to the South, even the people he grows fond of are described in a condescending and condescending manner, such as the worshipers and speakers he encounters during the multi-day religious event he stumbles upon. Finally, when he encounters the murder of a man by burning, his emotional response is not empathy or even horror. Instead, he describes a “great wave of humiliation and shame” (137). This life-changing event actually makes him feel embarrassed about being a black man, someone of a race “that might be treated this way” (137). For him to understand that a murder had just occurred without consequence or reproach was to recognize an apparent inferiority in the darkness, and it is at this point that he chooses to discard it. Conversely, the narrator also elevates the white people he encounters, perhaps unconsciously, and shows a marked preference for them over people of his own race. The millionaire is a very important example and evidence of the narrator's enormous respect and love for him can be seen throughout the middle part of the book. However, his exaltation takes on its most nuanced and poignant form in the way the narrator describes women. Chronologically he sees the woman in the theater first, calling her “so young, so beautiful, so ethereal” (98), a description almost fit for a goddess. When we realize that her father is also the narrator's father, and this girl is her half-sister, it is finally implied that this woman is undoubtedly white. The narrator's penchant for glorifying the white woman does not stop there. When he meets his future wife, he enters into a series of internal comments that also deify her and equate her whiteness with purity, beauty and.