Invisible Man is the story of a young Black man’s disillusionment with America. The novel’s Narrator, who never reveals his name, seeks purpose, validation, and a place to use his gifts, only to find that no one sees him, really sees him, as a human being. One main reason for this is what is now called “white fragility,” and the novel’s depictions of it remain as true to life as they were when it was first published in 1952.
The term white fragility, coined in a 2011 essay by academic Robin DiAngelo, is problematic for some, and DiAngelo’s argument has been criticized from different perspectives. Linguist John McWhorter wrote in 2020 that her work “diminishes Black people in the name of dignifying us.” Other, less convincing critiques, like the one found in this book, rely on bad-faith leaps of logic that don’t discredit white fragility so much as they epitomize it.
According to DiAngelo, white fragility occurs because “White people in North America live in a social environment that protects and insulates them from race-based stress.” In these protective spaces, they “are taught to see their perspectives as objective and representative of reality.” When other realities penetrate such bubbles, they come as “a kind of unwelcome shock to the system.” Reactions to these shocks take different forms, including revulsion, dismay, and outrage.
In Invisible Man, these three emotional responses register in Mr. Norton, a trustee of the college the Narrator attends, during a visit to a location which once served as a slave quarters. Analyzing this fictional incident through the lens of white fragility may help to spur discussion of how the mindsets that lead to such responses continue to dehumanize people, rendering them “invisible” — and of what we might do to see better.
Revulsion
After being forced to participate in the humiliating battle royal for the amusement of prominent white citizens of his Southern hometown, the Narrator receives a briefcase and a scholarship. Modeled on Tuskegee, the college he enrolls in gives him mixed feelings in retrospect. He fondly remembers the “beautiful” place; its “buildings were old and covered with vines and the roads [were] gracefully winding, lined with hedges and wild roses that dazzled the eyes in the summer sun.” But his expulsion from school after the incident with Mr. Norton sets in motion the events that lead to his eventual resignation from society.
The Narrator describes Norton in Chapter 2:
I drove for him during the week he was on the campus. A face pink like St. Nicholas’, topped with a shock of silk white hair. An easy, informal manner, even with me. A Bostonian, smoker of cigars, teller of polite Negro stories, shrewd banker, skilled scientist, director, philanthropist, forty years a bearer of the white man’s burden, and for sixty a symbol of the Great Traditions.
Norton takes pride in his taking up of the “burden.” He has believed so much and for so long in the “‘vision’” of the school’s deceased Founder (based on Booker T. Washington) that he now can’t be sure whether that vision was the Founder’s or his own. Despite the fact that they’ve just met, Norton is certain his “‘fate’” and the Narrator’s are inseparably entwined. During their drive, he asks the Narrator to let him know not the Narrator’s own but Norton’s destiny:
“Will you promise to tell me my fate?” I heard.
“Sir?”
“Will you?”
“Right now, sir?” I asked with embarrassment.
“It is up to you. Now, if you like.”
I was silent. His voice was serious, demanding. I could think of no reply. The motor purred. An insect crushed itself against the windshield, leaving a yellow, mucous smear.
“I don’t know now, sir. This is only my junior year…”
“But you’ll tell me when you know?”
“I’ll try, sir.”
“Good.”
For Norton, the Narrator’s education and future matter only insofar as they reflect well upon Norton. He cares about the Narrator from a distance greater than that between the college and the town’s old slave quarters, where he asks to be driven. “‘I’ve never seen this section before,’” he says when they arrive. “‘It’s new territory for me.’” The place and the history and poverty of those who live in it are new for Norton because he’s spent his whole life insulated, in DiAngelo’s terms, “from race-based stress.” Despite his years of experience, he’s never seen anything quite like what he encounters here.
Neither is Norton prepared for it. “‘I know,” he tells the Narrator, “‘that many of the old families still survive. And individuals too, the human stock goes on, even though it degenerates. But these cabins!’” The Truebloods, who live in one, have recently become pariahs. Not only does the family live in poverty, but also Jim, the father, got his daughter pregnant while sleepwalking. The persisting conditions that lead to this kind of life are inconceivable to Norton. At first he can’t believe it; he demands to speak to Trueblood, who confirms the rumors by telling his story in full detail. “‘You have looked upon chaos,’” Norton asks him with revulsion, “‘and are not destroyed?’” Jim Trueblood isn’t, but Norton is. Mere moments after his arrival, he’s in such a state of shock that only whiskey can revive him.
Dismay
The nearest bar, also in the old quarters, is the Golden Day. A haunt for traumatized Great War veterans — Black men, now mental patients, who’d had good jobs before and weren’t honored by their country for their service — it’s not a place the Narrator wants to keep Norton for long. He knows that what goes on here will come as another (again in DiAngelo’s words) “unwelcome shock to [Norton’s] system.” But he doesn’t have a choice; Norton is so sick as to be “‘dying’” from his interview with Trueblood.
In his attempt to save Norton’s life, the Narrator exposes him to a truth, to a reality, the trustee has never known before. Yet it is no less real, no less objective, than Norton’s is. The veterans reveal this truth to Norton through their madness, like a troupe of Shakespearean Fools. “‘Look, Sylvester,’” one of them says, “‘it’s Thomas Jefferson!’” One man refers to Norton as “‘the Messiah.’” Another, who’d been a doctor before his military service, confronts Norton about his idea of his relationship with the Narrator:
“Behold! a walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!”
Mr. Norton looked amazed.
As the trustee has no frame of reference for this experience, the doctor’s words distress him. Norton has never had to suppress his emotions for the racial comfort of others. Still, the doctor tries to make his point:
“You cannot see or hear or smell the truth of what you see — and you, looking for destiny! It’s classic! And the boy, the automaton, he was made of the very mud of the region and he sees far less than you. To you he is a mark on the score-card of your achievement, a thing and not a man; a child, or even less — a black amorphous thing. And you, for all your power, are not a man to him, but a God, a force — ”
Mr. Norton stood abruptly. “Let us go, young man,” he said angrily.
Being spoken to in this way, in this place, by this person, and being forced to question his own mindset, are all too much for Norton. His astonishment has turned to anger, which only escalates from here.
Outrage
Instead of listening to the doctor, Norton dismisses him. He refuses to see the truth in the madness, using it as an excuse to depart: “‘Hurry,’” he tells the Narrator, “‘the man is as insane as the rest.’” Were they to leave now, Norton’s anger might not rise any further. But on the way out there’s a scuffle that sends Norton and the Narrator tumbling down the Golden Day’s staircase. The Narrator relates what happens next:
I saw Mr. Norton, his face pale again, his white suit rumpled, topple and fall, his head scraping against the screen of the door.
“Hey!”
I opened the door and raised him up.
“Goddamit, out agin,” Halley [the Golden Day’s bartender] said. “How come you bring this dead white man here, school-boy?”
“Is he dead?”
“DEAD!” he said, stepping back indignantly. “He caint die!”
“What’ll I do, Halley?”
“Not in my place, he caint die,” he said, kneeling.
Mr. Norton looked up. “No one is dead or dying,” he said acidly. “Remove your hands!”
In his rising anger, Norton confirms this last truth — that the white “Messiah” can’t die — and commands Halley to take his hands off him. This physical violation comes as the last straw: only now is Norton “visibly angry.” After centuries of white violence upon Black bodies, it’s the slightest touch in the reverse direction that provokes the greatest outrage.
The Narrator still has a long arc to travel and much more to learn about America. At this point, he’d like to remain at the college and in Norton’s good graces. For his part, Norton remains magnanimous, saying that the incident wasn’t the Narrator’s fault. But even before he has recuperated, Norton has forgotten about the connection between his “fate” and the Narrator’s, which previews their next encounter, much later in New York, in the novel’s Epilogue:
“Don’t you know me?” I said.
“Should I?” he said.
“You see me?” I said, watching him tensely.
“Why, of course — Sir, do you know the way to Centre Street?”
“So. Last time it was the Golden Day, now it’s Centre Street. You’ve retrenched, sir. But don’t you really know who I am?”
“Young man, I’m in a hurry,” he said, cupping a hand to his ear. “Why should I know you?”
“Because I’m your destiny.”
“My destiny, did you say?” He gave me a puzzled stare, backing away. “Young man, are you well? Which train did you say I should take?”
Norton’s brief exposure to spaces and people that exist outside his insulating bubble has taught him nothing. The shocks he received weren’t strong enough to jolt him from complacency and privilege. Perhaps his greatest privilege is the one that lets him go back to that insulated life. The old slave quarters and the Golden Day were little more for him than tourist attractions on the worst trip of his life.
It might be argued that Norton wanted to visit the old slave quarters, that he volunteered to step outside his insulating space. While this is true in a physical sense, he refused to do the same mentally. His experience mirrors one related by DiAngelo in “White Fragility” that occurred in an antiracist training session:
One of the white participants left the session and went back to her desk, upset at receiving (what appeared to the training team as) sensitive and diplomatic feedback on how some of her statements had impacted several people of color in the room. At break, several other white participants approached us (the trainers) and reported that they had talked to the woman at her desk, and she was very upset that her statements had been challenged. They wanted to alert us to the fact that she literally “might be having a heart attack.” Upon questioning from us, they clarified that they meant this literally. These co-workers were sincere in their fear that the young woman might actually physically die as a result of the feedback.
The participant may have been willing to physically enter the session. But when her attitudes were questioned in the gentlest possible way, she, like Norton, wasn’t mentally prepared. The similarity between her emotional and physical response and Norton’s reveals the deep desire we — and by “we,” I mean white people — have for these spaces. This need is so profound that some states have legislated limitations on what can and can’t be read in public classrooms.
Invisible Man is one of the books that are banned in some of those classrooms. Its Narrator’s story forces us out of our protective bubbles, challenging our comfortable realities. Some of us, including those in power, will go to any lengths to keep it this way. It’s not clear what would happen if we resolved to spend more time outside these comfort zones, physically and mentally, or whether we’re up to the task. But it’s likely that if we did, and over time, at any rate, our vision would improve and our reactions to our bubbles being punctured more mature and empathetic.
