The Making of an Invisible Man - 1/17/12

"When you have the power to give a man what he already has by birthright, you then have the power to take away what he can only lose at death. The man does not at any time cede this power; it is in place long before experiences it. What is worse is that in giving a man what he already has, he assumes that he never had it, and that your are magnanimous for giving it to him, when in actuality you are an oppressive force that in control of something that should be free to every man and woman. Then, in regulating what you have given, you make the man believe that it wasn't truly his to have, and that he must fight for the piece he was given, rather than for the whole that was his before even knew it existed. Throughout all of this, the man has been led to believe that the power lies in the 'hand that feeds him,' though the true power lies in self-determination. He doesn't believe in his own power, in himself; he loses faith in the world, and either spends time trying to regain it, or simply gives up. Either way it goes, he was never able to realize his potential, being disadvantaged from the incipient moments of his decision-making ability. Feeling as though there is nothing he can do to combat the power of the greater entity, he concedes defeat, fading as an individual to become just another body in the sea of the masses. This is how you break a man, how you make him invisible. Word to Ralph Ellison."

-A. Lewis