Jan and Brother Jack

When I was reading the chapter where the narrator in Invisible Man meets Brother Jack and gets recruited to their so-called Brotherhood, I couldn’t help but think of Bigger and Jan’s interactions in Native Son. Both seem to be examples of self-proclaimed white liberals approaching Black men and asking them to join their cause that the men may or may not even know anything about or support. 

One thing that stood out to me as a parallel between the two situations was the way that Brother Jack and Jan talked to the narrator and Bigger. Without ever having met them, they immediately spoke in overly friendly tones and made claims about being “on their side.” Brother Jack repeatedly referred to the narrator as “Brother,” which made him very uncomfortable and uneasy. Jan spoke to Bigger in similar ways, demanding that Bigger call him Jan and not “sir,” and pretending to be his friend. We can see a trend of white leaders of some sort of liberal organization approaching black men and immediately being very friendly, and proclaiming that they are “one of you,” “on your side,” etc. 

Another way that their conversations were similar is in the reasons that the white men wanted Bigger and the narrator to join their causes, whether they said it explicitly or not. Jan told Bigger that the communist party needed more people like Bigger, referring explicitly to his race, which definitely seemed to rub him the wrong way. Brother Jack wasn’t quite as explicit with his language, but later when they were at the party, a woman was overheard asking if he was “black enough,” which revealed that he was very much being recruited because of his race.

Both of these men are seen being pulled into or towards organizations that they know almost nothing about. White men are sent to be sickenly friendly with them and pretend to care, while clearly seeming to have ulterior motives to recruit black men, possibly to make their cause seem even more progressive. 

Comments

  1. MitchellSeptember 27, 2021 at 8:05 AM

    You're opening up some of the many contradictions in Brotherhood rhetoric: Jack, from the start, insists that he is "on the narrator's side" (meaning, presumably, on the side of anti-racism, civil rights, support for victims of eviction, etc.), and wants to recruit him to represent the Brotherhood in Harlem. At the same time, he bristles whenever the narrator wants to "talk in terms of race" ("What other terms do you know?"). The Brotherhood insists that they are "on the side" of Black people on the one hand, and that they don't "see race" on the other hand. Is this a sustainable contradiction?

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