Since the beginning of the nation, white Americans have suffered from deep inner uncertainty as to who they really are. One of the ways that has been used to simplify the answer has been to seize upon the presence of black Americans and use them as a marker, a symbol of limits, a metaphor for the "outsider." Despite his racial difference and social status, something indisputably American about Negroes not only raised doubts about the white value system but aroused the troubling suspicion that whatever else the true American is, he is also somehow black.

Ralph Ellison, "What America Would Be Like without Blacks," 1970