Coming of age - reaching the age of “maturity” or “discretion” - is variously a process, a moment, or a scene akin to the structural “scenes of instruction” inherent in African American narratives described by Dexter Fisher (1990). The discovery of American society's racism is the major event in the protagonist's development and in his “education.” Emphasis is placed upon being an African American in America, where ownership, belonging, and their negation, and dispossession, are central to the notion of identity. How can one own one's destiny - be self-determined - when one does not own oneself and faces an irrevocable loss? The recognition of belonging takes place within the narrower circles of the family and of the black community, while society as a whole is often viewed as a threat, if not as the enemy. For the black adolescent, “The Man,” slang for the white man, translates the contradiction set up by racism between maturation and manhood. Indeed the characters' acquisition of a sense of belonging and its opposite, independence, leads to various questions: What are the major events in the protagonist's growth from individual self into social being? Who and what functions as the “educator” in the African American novel?