Don't be smart now boy

We all remember the scene at the end of the Battle Royal where the narrator is giving is speech, and after having to repeat the same phrase over and over again he finally slips up and says social equality instead of social responsibility.  The reaction is a generally angry one, but one man speaks directly to him, "We mean to do right by you, but you've got to know your place at all times" (Ellison 31).  Throughout this chapter, all of these men at the Battle Royal have appeared as stereotypical racists of the Jim Crowe south, so I put that little dialogue way back in my mind.  Surely, I thought, the narrator's reaction to the whole night is much more important than one man's reaction.  And so I believed this until I read Chapter 22.

In Chapter 22, the narrator arrives back at his Harlem district office, to find the committee member waiting for him.  Early on in the interrogation of the narrator he describes his use of personal responsibility.  Brother Jack quickly retorts "His personal responsibility...Did I hear him correctly?...This is astounding, where did you get it?" (Ellison 463).  Brother Jack is not happy at the initiative of one of district chiefs, instead he completely turns on the narrator.  He begins mockingly calling him the "great tactician" and from that point forward, with the help of the rest of the committee he attempts to put the narrator in his place.  He orders him to go be indoctrinated by Hambro again, who makes it clear that they have decided to abandon Harlem, or as he puts it "your members will have to be sacrificed" (Ellison 501).  This kind of move could only come from someone as powerful as Jack, so it is just one more way he tries to put the narrator back in his place.

Social equality and personal responsibility may appear to be totally opposing ideas, but the Brotherhood fears individuality, much like the racist Southerners fear organized masses.  To the Brotherhood, one person openly saying he is following his own ideas and not propagating the ideas of the committee, is the ultimate fear, especially by a popular Black figure.  Taken in this context, Jack's reaction is much the same as the Southern racist.  The one place that the narrator thought he could get to the top of, the Brotherhood, is just a Northern manifestation of the culture he fled.  Now not only do we see firm evidence of something we have suspected all along, but the narrator finally realizes it too.  For the first time in his life he understands his current situation, not his past, so he can fight back at the group that has lied to him all along.