Double consciousness

W. E. B Du Bois The Souls of sear Folk is a powerful and engaging explication on the condition of the American inkiness. The article traces the problems of African Americans struggle with identity in livid-based America and the seemingly impossible task to carving a whimsical identity and self-consciousness. It is, as he nones, a history of this strife, this longing to ready self- conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. Introduced in this line is the concept of a double consciousness. Du Bois believes that being black has been some(prenominal) a blessing and a curse since one was born with a veil but also gifted with second-sight. The world does not introduce the Negro a true self-consciousness for his sentience of self is unceasingly reflection of how others see him a refracted image of oneself that has been dictated and distorted by others with amused contempt and pity. An American Negro therefore feels a sense of duality with two war ring ideals in one dark body. to that extent the task to transcend that double consciousness and find union surrounded by two dualities is a difficult one for it is a painful journey of doubt and confusion in seeking double aims and unreconciled ideals. The American Negro needs to speak the language of the whites and accept their culture thus far not be ashamed of his own. He must yet differentiate that in order for there to be an emancipated future, the American Negro needs the knowledge of the white world which was Greek to his own chassis and blood and for a culture he rightly belongs, he could not articulate the message. Martin Luther King Jr. , arguably the most renowned of African Americans, is perhaps an apt example of the double consciousness and the struggle of the American Negro Du Bois writes of. In his desire to advance the rights of African Americans, end racial segregation and discrimination, King needed to speak the language of the white someone and ironically share the ideals of liberty and freedom advanced by white Anglo-Saxon society. Yet King saw that it was necessary in the figure of this the land of their fathers fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.