Du Bois’ twoness builds upon the conflicting duality of African-American self-consciousness. The African-American, wishing neither to Africanize America nor to Americanize his African heritage, meets at once a paralyzing physical barrier and a distorting lens in his stride toward bona fide societal embrace as an amalgam of both cultures. According to Du Bois, the most immediate effect of twoness is its psychological imposition of self-doubt and uncertainty. The predominantly white American environment of the early 20th century conferred upon society its own paradigm of societal assessment. This paradigm, one which followed expressly from white values, placed black values in the distant periphery, if even in the picture at all. Thus, blacks
