How Does Du Bois Understand By The Term “double Consciousness”? How Useful Is It For Thinking About Inequality Today?

The concept of double-consciousness was first coined by Du Bois in his seminal work of The Souls of Black Folk (1903). The concept described and explained the strange experience of the black individuals in the United States who had to perceive their self-identity through white perspective while, at the same time, maintain their self-identity as African Americans. Du Bois was sensitive to the contradiction in the American society regarding race and racism and was regarded as a pioneer in the study of black history (Yudell, 2016). Nowadays, the concept of the double consciousness continues to be utilised in any given society and is arguably useful to understand the experience of the black individuals especially in regard to inequality across nations. This essay discusses Du Bois concept of double consciousness and argues that the concept of double consciousness is still relative to the lived African- American experiences. The remainder of the essay explains how the double consciousness is useful when thinking about inequality nowadays by bringing into the discussion issues such as black people being more prone to the stooped and searched procedures by the police.

During the Enlightenment, some European theories were introduced regarding the differences between humans and their classifications. The exploration of Africa, Asia and the Americas, a time where the Europeans first were in contact with the different type of human, influenced many Enlightenment thinkers such as Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), Johann Blumenbach (1752 1840) among others and inspired them to classify and document human biological variation. The beginning of the scientific idea of race traced back to the 18th century when the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus contributed to the concept of race as he proposed a system of humankind classification called Systema Naturae . Based on external physical features such as skin colour, behaviour and race, humans were ranked according to this system in four geographical subspecies of Homo Americanus, Homo Europaeus, Homo Asiaticus and Homo Africanus (Yudell, 2011). For example, Linnaeus states that while Europaeus were white and muscular, the Americanus were reddish and stubborn (Yudell, 2011). He claims that his classification determines who was fit for leadership and who was destined to be led (Kvisto Croll, 2012: 6). At the end of the 18th century, the German scientist Johann Blumenbach (1752-1840) followed Linnaeus work and suggested five racial classifications of humankind based on the shape of the skull: Caucasian, Mongolian, Ethiopian, American, and Malay. He further suggested that the Caucasian is the superior racial group whereas the rest are inferior. At the beginning of the 19th century, the American scientist Samuel Morton (1799 1851) offered an intensive explanation of the physical and intellectual differences between humankind. He concluded that based on his experiments on cranial capacity, the Caucasian and Mongolian races have a big skull size indicating that they have a higher level of intelligence compared to Africans who have small skull size. These findings indicate that race was articulated into a concept that emphasises the biological differences among humans and is used to classify humans based on the physical differences within a hierarchical social system (Collins, 2014). Early in the 20th Century, race came to be recognised as differences between the humankind based on the genetic distinction. Scientists from the late 20the century conclude that there are constitutional and genetic differences between the whites and blacks in the mental and intelligence tests. However, Yudell (2011), points out that despite the fact that in recent decades race has been proven to have a biological origin, historians and social scientists believe that race is socially constructed and the attempts to prove the biological origin of race have all been shown to be false.

Refusing the nineteenth-century theories of the inferiority and superiority of some racial mankind groups, Du Bois has challenged the biological race concept. His beliefs stem from a change in his perception about science as a solver of social hierarchies. He instead believes that science is used as a tool to reinforce social injustice rather than eliminating it (Olson, 2005). He theorises that race is a product of power and resistance rather than biological inheritance, connecting race to class relations in American capitalism (Du Bois cited in Olson, 2005, 2). In this line of thought, Du Bios argues that race is not an appropriate scientific category that provides a sufficient understanding of humankind differences, but rather it creates the worlds of race themselves (Olson, 2005, 4). For instance, Du Bois believes that the social construction of race is hugely contributing to the division between individuals. He continued to explain that the human species so shade and mingle with each other that it is impossible to draw a colour line between black and other races (Du Bois cited in Yudell, 2011, 5).

Du Bois describes in his book of The Soul of the Black folk (1903) the strange situation of the African-Americans when they had to split their identities and try to fit in one character of being American. He explains his concept of double consciousness as 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 (Du Bois, 1903, 8). Although The Soul of the Black folk was writing after the political actions of declaring the legal freedom for the black slaves, Do Bois states that this supposed freedom is inadequate, and the blacks still suffer from racism and discrimination. He reveals the question of [h]ow does it feel to be a problem? (1903, 7), introducing the attitude towards African-Americans upon their liberation from the legal, social, or political restriction in the 20th century. He mentions his experience when a white girl refuses to accept his visiting cards and explains that since one s sense of race and racial terms comes only from experience, the meaning of being black or white is not inborn but is derived from experience (Gibson, 1996: xxv). Here, Du Bois illustrates the strange experience of being black that it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others [ ] shut out from their world by a vast veil (1903: 2). The "veil" is a substantive concept that gains its importance for its symbolic meaning that Du Bois primarily used to metaphorically describe the psychological manifestation of the colour line in his book. The veil exists in the mind of the American, Do Bois argues, that compels them to build a picture of the world based on "racism" and "the Negro is [...] 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" (Du Bois, 1903, Xiii). For Du Bois, the veil is seen as a barrier that prevents the white from seeing the experience of the blacks, at the same time, the blacks struggle to unite their identities and experience oppression. Although Du Bois uses the concepts of the veil and double conciseness distinctly in his writings, he introduces the existences of those two concepts in the experience of the black in America. For him, the term veil is coupled with the double conciseness of the black as it manifests the inner struggle experienced by the subordinated black in America attempting to fit into the white-dominated culture. Du Bois asks the question of Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house? (1903: 1) to express the complexity of being both Black and American. In this line of thought, he argues that double consciousness is a way of describing the internalisation of racist systems of representation (Glenn, 2009: 80).

Remarkably, the contemporary British writer Paul Gilroy (1956- present) utilises the term of the double consciousness in his remarkable book of the black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness (1993). Gilroy provides an intensive study of the black history, experience, culture construction African-diasporic . He describes the displacement of African blacks and explains that the specificity of the modern political and cultural formation I want to call the Black Atlantic can be defined, on one level, through [a] desire to transcend both the structures of the nation-state and the constraints of ethnicity and national particularity (1993, 19). Here Gilroy explains that the Black Atlantic signifies the formation of the modern, political societies that is not a Black American or Caribbean culture but rather it is the formation of racial mutation and hybridity (Gilroy, 1993). Gilroy seeks to explain that the contemporary black English, like Anglo-African of earlier generation [ ] stand between (a least) two great culture assemblage [...] black and white (1993. 1). That is to say that Gilroy clearly builds his discourse based on Du Bois concept of double consciousness to suggest the struggle of the blacks to reconcile their two identities (African and European) does exist.

Despite the fact that the majority of Du Bois works is about African Americans, I believe that the concept of double consciousness is still alive and does apply to any minority group in any given society. The double consciousness is central to understanding the issue of race and inequality in modern societies. It is useful to come closer to the experience of the black people or any subordinated groups that experience the weird situation of seeing one s self through the eyes of others (Du Bois,1903, 5). Immigrants, for example, are a group of people who experience the notion of the double consciousness. Those people struggle to maintain their cultural values and identities and at the same time seek to identify themselves as citizens of the host country. The two identities are not unified in the immigrants mind, and therefore immigrants have to try and balance between the two conflicting and separate identities. The American novelist Toni Morrison (1931- present) offers in her book of The Origin of the Others, (2017) an elegant reminder of Du Bois concept of double consciousness and provides a new perspective of the configuration of otherness. She states that immigrants to the United States understood that if they wanted to become real Americans, they must sever or at least downplay their ties to their native country, to embrace their whiteness the definition of Americanness (sadly) remains colour for many people (Morrison, 2007, 17). Morrison depicts her own experience of being an African American and illustrates the painful life of blacks in the United States as living in a nation of people who decided that their worldview would combine agendas for individual freedom and mechanisms for devastating racial oppression (Morrison, cited in Madden, 1995, 11). She explains that the world that the black people live in is unequal as in this country, American means white. Everybody else has to hyphenate (Morrison cited in Kennedy, 2016, 5). What Morrison meant by white is that this term acts as identification and provides a sense of belonging to the group. Eventually, everything out of this term is out of the group.

Kennedy at el (2016) note that African Americans live today in a world where they have fundamental rights and fewer opportunities such as voting rights, education access, and other protections. Thus, it is therefore clear that the double consciousness is still a relevant concept to contemporary society in particular in the case of inequality. Although some might argue that modern society is a post-racial and relatively distributes equal opportunities to individuals, evidence suggests inequalities that go with the concept of race, such as gender and ethnicity, still exist across nations. In addition to the experiences of the Black African, there are other minorities group and ethnicities where individuals are made to feel like a problem and must attempt to reconcile two identities. According to Bowling and Phillips (2007), advocates of stop and search present that ethnic minorities are merely more prone to commit crimes, "meaning any police targeting is justified" (2007, 3). The authors demonstrate that `black people are much more likely to be arrested for [....] street robbery and drugs offences`, a discourse documented by the comments of police officers and arrest rate statistics. They claim that "stereotypes of black people have been more consistent in that they are thought to be more prone to violent crime and drug abuse, to be incomprehensible, suspicious, hard to handle, naturally excitable, aggressive, lacking brainpower, troublesome and tooled up " (2007, p3). Based on the last report published by the Equality and human right commission in England and Wales, black people were subjected to six times to be stopped and searched, and they were more likely to be arrested compared to white people. Again, this issue of stopped and searched procedures shows the experiences of the black individuals and illustrates their situation in society as a problem as Du Bois states in The Soul of the Black folk.

Do Bois was clear when he explains that despite the civil rights and social inclusion laws, the Negro endure massive injustice and oppression. He states that African-Americans merely wish 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 (1903, 9). The idea of liberation for slaves concerns equality, however, Du Bois was aware of the fact that the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land [ ] the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people (1903, 10). He proposed that to solve the problem of inequality in the world of the black , Work, culture, liberty, - all these we need, not singly but together (1903, 11). Du Bois hopes that one day, the whites and blacks can coexist peacefully in one society. When African Americans are equally treated in every field as American, then they will be truly equal, this would be the mark of true equality in his point of view.

One potential limitation of the concept of double consciousness presented by Allen (2003) is that double conciseness is suffered from its reliability as it is based on weak examples from a particular group of people. In other words, double consciousness is not a persistent term that can comprehensively explain the experiences of black people. Despite this limitation of Du Bois theory of the double consciousness, I would argue that the concept is still relevant to our society, and it is beneficial to understand the experiences that black individuals encounter especially in the case of inequality.

In conclusion, Du Bois` idea of double consciousness describes a situation where African Americans had to see themselves through the eyes of Americans. In this view, the blacks are seen in a massive battle of attempting to unify their two identities Africans and Americans. This essay has tried to illustrate that race has neither biological nor genetic origin. The concept of double consciousness still applies in modern societies despite all the attempts of arguing that we live in a post-racial society. Black individuals are frequently viewed as a significant problem instead of individuals who suffer from discrimination and inequality. The essay hopefully illustrates that the concept is widely spread across social subjects such as inequality and social discrimination towards black people. Du Bois was optimistic that one day the Negro would attain true self-consciousness and live peacefully with Americans. Sadly, now, we live in a world of deep racial discriminations and inequality that embedded in our societies make it hard to achieve racial equality.

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