86■Double
consciousness, by W.E.B. Du Bois (デュボイスの二重意識)
"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
twoness,̶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.
“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.
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 does not wish to Africanize America, for America
has too much to teach the world and Africa. He wouldn’t bleach his
Negro blood 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”
Du Bois, W. E.
B. (1903). The Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover
Publications. William Edward
Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois, 1868-1963