The Pursuit of Visibility

Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?" (14). In *Invisible Man* by Ralph Ellison, he presents the narrative of a man who becomes invisible to those around him. The nameless narrator, is labeled through the novel as a pimp, a gambler, a reverend, and many other names. He gets into numerous scuffles, attempting to determine where he fits in with the black community but doesn't succeed. He finally goes into hiding in search of himself. At the end of the novel he is ready to face the world again as the invisible man. The book evokes frustration in the reader. By the end, you wish for the protagonist to be noticed by his society but all his efforts lead to no avail. His story, redolent of the present African American struggle, sparked my interest in
the Black American pursuit of visibility. The pursuit of visibility is very prevalent in American society. Groups who are being discriminated against constantly protest to be heard, to be recognized, to be seen... One thing
  Ellison makes clear is that invisibility is a two-way street. Those who are 'invisible' to their society are only invisible because their society refuses to 'see' them.
 Because of this the focus for my research is how the white supremacist structuralism that refused to 'see' blacks in the 1930s compares and contrast with the structuralism present in 2015. I understand this is
a very broad topic so I need to narrow it down. I plan to research topics like respectability politics, the victimization of black youths, gentrification, Jim Crow, etc., and see how this hinders
 visibility. More than researching society's blindness, I would also like to research the characteristics of blacks' pursuit of visibility. Ellison's protagonist had multiple views on white and black tensions that surfaced throughout the novel. This was caused by the dissonance between his grandfathers black nationalist view and his evident support of respectability politics. This generational nuance coupled with white supremacy intensifies the search for identity. The pursuit is also characterized by frustration or repetitive blocking of ones' goals. Several notorious black orators have had many of their pathways blocked in efforts to gain visibility. I'd like to research the methods people used to breakthrough these boundaries.