Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
within: “need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil?” 3 This brings us to double consciousness: “One ever feels his two-ness, ––an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” Here, we get a preliminary understanding of double consciousness as one consciousness, “an American,” and the other, “a Negro,” being at odds with one another. Double consciousness is not being able to see oneself as one or the other side; neither is it “true self-consciousness,” for the moment one may try to escape from one identity, it reaffirms itself. In fact, Du Bois argues that attempting to escape from either identity is for one, impossible, and in addition, undesirable. The struggle inherent to double consciousness is not one of attempting to escape from either identity—rather, it is one of attempting to merge the two. Du Bois writes that the Black American experiences a “longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self” which does not include a wish for either “of the older selves to be lost.” 4 He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face. 5 It is clear, from this passage, that Du Bois values racial and cultural differences. On a societal level, he believes that different groups have different wells of knowledge that they may teach each other and be taught by one another. And, on an individual level, for the Black American, there exists a desire to acknowledge both one’s Blackness and one’s American-ness.
3 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk , 4. 4 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk , 9. 5 Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk , 9.
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