Juneteenth | Ralph Ellison and the American Canon
In the following essay excerpt, Nadel considers Juneteenth a version of “Ellison’s America,” in which Ellison tries to reconcile the American psyche with the repressed “sin of American racial pride.”
The point I am making—and I cannot stress it strongly enough—is that for Ellison, the Negro represents the return of the repressed in the American psyche:
The Founding Fathers committed the sin of American racial pride . . . In failing the test of what was after to be termed the American dilemma, they prepared the way for the evils that Jefferson had hoped to pile upon the royal head of England’s king, and loaded them upon the black backs of anonymous American slaves. Worse, these Americans were designated as perfect victims for sacrifice, and were placed beyond...
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