Double-Consciousness Essay
W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent African-American scholar in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wrote many significant essays that challenged the dangerous societal view that black Americans weren’t capable of progress. In one of those essays, Strivings of the Negro People, he develops new terminology to discuss the many forces that act upon black Americans in a white dominated society, the most important of which is double-consciousness. The phrase, “double-consciousness”, refers to the division of the African-American self into two, conflicting facets: one being the American and the other the Negro, ever being forced to look at themselves through the eyes of a racist society.
In Du Bois’ essay, Strivings of the…