Diagnostic

Diagnostic: Double Consciousness

 

W.E.B. Dubois’ claim that the history of the American Negro is tied to his two-ness is a claim I cannot disagree with. In America, the American Negro has always had to look through two lenses: One in which they see themselves consciously and free of judgment, and the other in which they had had to look at themselves through the eyes of the whites, who gave them freedom just to prevent any guilt from overtaking them. There is no doubt that their struggle with their identities is true, but one must see why. In the past century and beyond, The American Negro has had to deal with an internal struggle based on self-identity in a world that demands their torturous service. Instead of being considered as equals and as humans who live in America as others do, the negroes have lived for hundreds of years with one true identity and then another hundred more years being forced to replace it with a lesser identity in order to conform to colonists and in order to avoid extermination. They have had to perish as slaves and they have had to devote their own lives as the property of White America.

Before they were enslaved, Negroes lived in a culture with no race barrier and they lived in peace among themselves only. Nothing was wrong with the culture they lived through and they survived many years without perishing to famine or to colonization. But America felt the need to reduce the Negroes as property and they also tried to erase their identity as cultured Negroes living in Africa. But there is no need to erase such a previous identity because it is not wrong. The American Negroes’ two-ness should not consist of one identity being over the other, but the identities should be equally recognized. Although ridicule and embarrassment comes with being identified as a Negro in America, this is the world that they will have to live in and to endure for many years until their eventual acknowledgement as humans is recognized.  Even with struggling with an Americanized identity, it should not discredit the fact that the Negro still has value, knowledge and a unique culture to offer to the world. The Negro does not lose his value as a human for being a Negro. He is still a human.