Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man: Irony 4 key examples

The narrator remembers standing with the white children because he believed he was white. His confusion here is not because he is unfamiliar with racial categories. He is the one who gave his classmate "Shiny" his nickname because of his shining dark skin and white teeth and eyes. He has already been exposed to and even participated in casual racism against Black people. But the narrator has never yet looked at himself or his mother and recognized that they are partially Black. He has always assumed that he's white. The way the teacher looks at him when he stands with the white children reveals that the narrator has misunderstood himself and his position in the world. The rest of the world has had information about him that he is only just receiving. He is completely stunned by the revelation, and it takes him an afternoon to fully realize that the teacher's puzzlement was because he is Black.

The fact that the narrator doesn't realize he is Black until this moment underscores how deeply protective his mother is of him. She doesn't want him to feel the effects of any sort of societal disadvantage, so she does not let him know that they are Black. Ultimately, her decision to hide part of herself and part of the narrator's identity from him sets the tone for his complex attitude toward race throughout his life.

The metaphorical "wedge" the narrator credits with opening doors for him is his own mastery of ragtime. By learning to play ragtime so well, he paves the way for himself to build a lucrative career performing for rich people who want this fashionable style of music in their homes and at their parties. Elsewhere, the narrator has noted that the United States generally considers white people's art superior to Black people's art. He has refuted the notion of this superiority by naming examples of highly regarded Black art, of which ragtime is one.

Nonetheless, it is ironic that the same world that looks down on Black artists would reward his performance of ragtime more than his performance of Beethoven or Chopin's compositions. Trying to learn the classical music that supposedly signals "respectability" and elitism turns out not to take him anywhere. Learning to play Black music takes him much farther. The narrator is beginning to reveal the ironic way in which white Americans separate Black art from its creators, celebrating the art while denigrating the artists.

There is another layer of situational irony in the fact that, on closer inspection, it may not be the ragtime at all that opens doors for the narrator. Rather, as he says himself, his friend the millionaire is "the means by which I escaped from this lower world." The narrator wants to imagine that he gets ahead on the merit of his own musical talent, but his musical talent would not have taken him very far without the support of a well-connected and well-resourced acquaintance. This passage scrambles the idea that the United States runs on meritocracy.

Anti-intermarriage laws cropped up in the South in the late 19th and early 20th century, largely as a reaction to the gains made during Reconstruction. White southerners feared "miscegenation," or the birth of mixed-race children if people were allowed to marry across racial categories. This is what the Union soldier means by "the mulatto South." Mixed-race children born with all the rights conferred on American citizens threatened white supremacy because they made it more difficult to maintain strict racial categories (categories that were always blurry at best). The Union soldier takes apart the logic behind the anti-intermarriage laws by pointing out that they are at odds with the way Southerners like to portray white women. If white women are really "pure," "virtuous," and worthy of the kind of "chivalric worship" conferred on them in the South, the soldier argues, it doesn't follow that they would want to marry Black men if allowed. Either the laws are superfluous, or (as the soldier suggests) the women aren't as "pure" and "virtuous" as the Texan and other Southern men would like to believe.

This argument is itself both racist and misogynistic. The Union soldier's use of racism in his defense of marriage equality is just as ironic as the Texan's logic. The scene has another level of situational irony in the fact that the only reason the narrator is privy to the conversation at all is that he is passing for white—otherwise, he would not have been admitted to the smoking car on the train where the other two men are talking. The narrator is left with a deep sense of unease because he would like to challenge what the soldier is saying, but he can't do so without risking the revelation that he is "intruding." Instead, he must tacitly agree with the lesser of two bad stances on race.

The "anomaly" the narrator refers to has to do not only with his status as a Black man passing for white, but also with his economic or "capital" success. By investing in real estate, he gets rich and begins to socialize with elite, rich white people. For the most part, they assume that there are no Black people among them to be offended by their racist and disparaging comments. In fact, the mistaken idea that there are no rich Black people is the basis for their comments to begin with. These people are similar to the former Union soldier the narrator overhears using racist arguments against racist laws. This soldier believes that Black people should be protected under the law, but he still does not want to associate with them. Likewise, the rich white people the narrator surrounds himself with in the North likely support the idea of racial equality but think of themselves as a different class of citizens. On the one hand, it was a bit unusual for Black people to find themselves among the extremely wealthy at this time because the deck was stacked against their economic success. On the other hand, as the narrator notes, his very existence is proof that there is nothing innately superior about rich white people. The narrator finds a delicious sense of moral superiority when he observes these people making a social gaffe by disparaging Black people in front of a Black person. He also finds it funny that he is profiting off the economic system these people think they monopolize.

But there is also situational irony here. The dramatic irony would place the narrator in a position of power over the foolish white people, but he can only laugh at the joke in the privacy of his own room. This irony plays into the overall ambivalence of the novel toward the narrator's choice to pass. He manages to climb the social ladder by presenting himself as white, but there is a question of whether the social ladder itself is worth climbing. In a sense, all he wins is admission into the company of these foolish white people.