The Souls of Black Folk by WEB Du Bois | Notes & Summary
The Double Consciousness
What is Double Consciousness?
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,––a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. 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.
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The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,–– this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. 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.
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This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout his- tory, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
These paragraphs describe the double consciousness perfectly. It is a twoness, an internal division and a Hegelian alienation from oneself: one African/black psyche and one American/white psyche.
Neither of these double consciousness is truly authentic however. They are both antagonistic to the individual but alienating to oneself.
The white psyche is internalized, it makes the black man self policing and self loathing. That is why it is so detrimental, because you feel a part of yourself reject the totality of yourself: “Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?” In the context of Smith, to be happy generally is to be praised and praiseworthy, the latter of which is determined by gauging the sympathy (or lack their of) of an impartial spectator. Smith concedes the inability of this impartial spectator to really transcend personal, cultural biases, as a result the blacks will end up with a mostly white impartial spectator in their mind that will never sympathize with them. Hence, they will never be happy.
But the black psyche is not that much better, because it is not defined by some authentic African heritage but merely in opposition to the whites. Either defined by wanting to beat the whites or as just simply a distaste for that which is white. Hegel said that when freedom of thought can only be discerned by how much it diverges from popular opinion, arbitrariness follows. In like manner, you don’t end up with great value systems if you just define Good in opposition to the Evil of the whites. In this manner, the Blacks have the Nietszchean slave morality, they are fueled by resentment they must repress as well and all the troubles that arrive with it. Even the black psyche alone can be coined a “double consciousness” because within it contains two consciousnesses.
Detriments of Double Consciousness
Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,––it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan––on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde––could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,––has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.
We already discussed how the white psyche is oppressive, alienating, restrictive. And the black psyche is arbitrary and resentful. But in combination, the real danger of this double consciousness is lack of agency, because you are always doubting yourself, you are being torn apart by contradictory value systems. They issue contradictory aims.
Benefits of Double Consciousness, Second-sight, the Veil
The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world…he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
The seventh son of the seventh son imbued with magical powers is part of popular folk lore. It is said he is born with this extra layer of skin above his face, a veil if you will. This veil is certainly a detriment since no one sees you but it is also a power, it allows you to observe without being observed. You become the unseen seer (think about a bride’s veil that covers her face but allows her to see). What the black person is uniquely positioned to see and spread as a message, Du Bois believes, is the mechanisms of oppression. Because they understand both the white perspective and the African American perspective.
Cause of Double Consciousness
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination- time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,––some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?
This is when Du Bois first realized he was different from the others, when a girl wouldn’t accept his ticket. You can see how this became the drive for him to define his blackness as opposed to whiteness or always with the intention to beat the whites. Du Bois thinks that the double consciousness is formed from a structural form of oppression. Whether that is from the institutions or how people interact with each other. It has become a habitual part of life.
The Cure of Double Consciousness
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Throughout his- tory, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,––it is the contradiction of double aims.
Du Bois thinks that the solution necessarily has two elements. The first element is granting political rights (structural problem of institutions being racist) the second element is higher education.
He doesn’t believe that higher education would fundamentally help people resolve the double consciousness, he doesn’t think its like a disorder that can be resolved through pure intellectual means. But he wants more African Americans to have the experience that he has had, and to inject these individuals into positions of power where they can make meaningful structural changes.
He thinks that higher education is suppose to help us examine society:
The function of the university is not simply to teach bread- winning, or to furnish teachers for the public schools, or to be a centre of polite society; it is, above all, to be the organ of that fine adjustment between real life and the growing knowledge of life, an adjustment which forms the secret of civilization.
Progress
My log schoolhouse was gone. In its place stood Progress; and Progress, I understand, is necessarily ugly….. How shall man measure Progress there where the dark faced Josie lies? How many heartfuls of sorrow shall balance a bushel of wheat? How hard a thing is life to the lowly, and yet how human and real! And all this life and love and strife and failure,––is it the twilight of nightfall or the flush of some faint-dawning day?
Du Bois first criticizes Booker T Washington, a prominent African American figure and early symbol of black success, and his proposal to get industrial education for black folk at the expense of their political rights. This is an example of the black psyche that rejects what seems white, civil liberties and higher education. He also critiques the atmosphere in Atlanta for perpetuating wealth over virtue:
For every social ill the panacea of Wealth has been urged,––wealth to overthrow the remains of the slave feudalism; wealth to raise the “cracker” Third Estate; wealth to employ the black serfs, and the prospect of wealth to keep them work- ing; wealth as the end and aim of politics, and as the legal tender for law and order; and, finally, instead of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness, wealth as the ideal of the Public School … In the Black World, the Preacher and Teacher embodied once the ideals of this people––the strife for another and a juster world, the vague dream of righteousness, the mystery of knowing; but to-day the danger is that these ideals, with their simple beauty and weird inspiration, will suddenly sink to a question of cash and a lust for gold.
One of his critiques with the materialism that has begun to proliferate within black communities is that it halts the progress of resolving this double consciousness. There needs to be black scholars, black advocates, etc. to further emancipate the blacks on a human level, and wealth is a detractor from this cause. It is always fascinating to see how much prestige can direct human capital.