In the Preface, Johnson alludes to W. E. B. Du Bois's foundational book The Souls of Black Folk as he describes the mission of his own book. He also uses a metaphor to elaborate on what he aims to accomplish:
In these pages it is as though a veil had been drawn aside: the reader is given of view of the inner life of the Negro in America, is initiated into the “freemasonry,” as it were, of the race.
Du Bois published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903. It was a collection of sociological essays about the experience of being Black in the United States. Du Bois described the "double-consciousness" Black Americans have of themselves as both Americans and as Black people, two identities that white Americans have historically made it difficult to reconcile. Du Bois uses the idea of a "veil" as a metaphor for the border between the experiences Black and white Americans share and the experiences of Blackness that lie beyond the comprehension of white people. Du Bois aimed to show that with education and other social supports, Black Americans could succeed alongside white Americans. Beginning each essay with a quote from a classic work of European literature alongside the musical score of a spiritual traditionally sung by enslaved Black people, he aims to carve out a place for Black culture within "respectable" American culture. Du Bois has faced criticism for some of his elitist ideas, but it is difficult to overstate the book's significance both to the field of sociology and as a work of African American Literature.
Johnson's allusion to the veil positions The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man as a response to Du Bois's book. He goes on to say that he wants to draw the veil aside to show the reader (here presumed to be white) the "freemasonry, as it were, of the race." Freemasonry is associated with America's founders and a slough of secrets and conspiracy theories. The idea that Johnson is exposing the "freemasonry" of Black people suggests both that he is exposing well-kept secrets and that Black people, too, are implicated in the founding of the United States. It is important to note that, as always in this book, Johnson might not be entirely forthright. There are aspects of Black culture that Johnson might be able to reveal to white readers, but the idea that Black people are all organized and conspiratorial turns out to be ludicrous. The narrator ends up choosing his own personal gain over collective progress, and ultimately most of the Black people he encounters make the choices that they believe are right for them personally. With his work to blend ragtime and classical music, the narrator lives out Du Bois's hypothesis that Black culture can and should be blended into "mainstream" white culture. Johnson lets the reader decide just how useful this project has been.
In Chapter 2, the narrator describes the unsettling experience of meeting his father. He uses a metaphor to develop a sense of pathos, demonstrating to the reader how damaging complex social dynamics can be to an individual child:
On the way I could think of nothing but this new father, where he came from, where he had been, why he was here, and why he would not stay. […] notwithstanding my changed relations with most of my schoolmates, I had only a faint knowledge of prejudice and no idea at all how it ramified and affected the entire social organism. I felt, however, that there was something about the whole affair which had to be hid.
By representing society metaphorically as an "organism," the narrator evokes the idea of a living creature with a delicately balanced constitution. Prejudice affects society in the way that a disease might affect a living creature, invading its cells and spreading through its body until none of the systems are functioning properly. The narrator has noticed that he interacts differently with his schoolmates ever since they all found out that he is Black. Now that he has finally met his white father, who holds himself at a distance, he is starting to discover that prejudice against Black people will affect every social relationship he will ever have. Even his relationship with his mother is shaped by his father's prejudice and by his mother's fear that the narrator himself will see himself differently if he knows he is Black.
The narrator's father is the one behaving badly, and yet it is the young narrator who begins to feel ashamed of his family. The novel as a whole serves as both a defense and a criticism of light-skinned Black people who choose to pass for white. By describing the undeserved shame he felt as a child due to his father's prejudice and the prejudice of the "entire social organism," the narrator wins readers' sympathy. Through this pathos, he helps them see that passing for white is a choice informed by a lifetime of social injustice and emotional pain. Passing might not be the answer to social inequality, but everyone who is part of the "social organism" needs to combat the disease of prejudice if passing is going to becomes a less attractive option for Black people with the privilege to pull it off.
In Chapter 8, the narrator uses a metaphor to emphasize the situational irony involved in his success as a musician:
By mastering ragtime I gained several things; first of all, I gained the title of professor. […] Through it I also gained a friend who was the means by which I escaped from this lower world. And, finally, I secured a wedge which has opened to me more doors and made me a welcome guest than my playing of Beethoven and Chopin could ever have done.
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.
