"He'll kill your depression, and your dispossession"

Some of the most surreal-seeming, hyperbolic, and symbolically laden details in Invisible Man turn out to be based in the historical reality of American popular culture. The "Dancing Sambo" dolls that Tod Clifton is found hawking on 43rd Street, which the narrator experiences as a personal and political "betrayal," with the mysterious mechanism that makes them dance and shimmy, seemingly on their own power? (The narrator is apparently unfamiliar with the technology of the marionette--one more example of him not seeing who's really pulling the strings!) Ellison isn't making this stuff up. There used to be not quite as many "Dancing Sambo" dolls on eBay as there were "Black Americana Banks," but they have now apparently banned sale of these items as well. They are still easily available on independent antiques web sites.

The packaging boasts that "It works by your magic," and it's pitched as a "magic trick"--so maybe we can forgive the narrator's failure to see the strings at first glance. Can you see what enrages the narrator about Clifton selling such an image, how it represents a "betrayal" of the Brotherhood's ideals? Clifton's dolls sound a bit cheaper--made of tissue paper and cardboard instead of wood--but the idea is the same. And once again, the Jim Crow Museum of Racist Memorabilia has some useful background information on the "Sambo" caricature and its origins in the children's book Little Black Sambo, within its overview of the "Picaninny" stereotype.