W. E. B. Dubois
On Double Consciousness
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, 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. It is 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 twoness,--an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self...
Excerpted from the chapter "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" in his book The Souls of Black Folk.
The Immortal Child
If a man dies shall he live again? We do not Know. But this we do know, that our children's children live forever and grow and develop toward perfection as they are trained. All human problems, then, center in the Immortal Child and his education is the problem of problems.
In the treatment of the child the world foreshadows its own future and faith. All words and all thinking lead to the child,--to that vast immortality and wide sweep of infinite possibility which the child represents.
Remember, too, that ... the ... child-mind has what your tired soul may have lost faith in,--the Power and the Glory.
Out of little, unspoiled souls rise up wonderful resources and healing balm...
--a power and impulse toward good which is the mightiest thing man has...
a great, moving, guiding ideal!
With this Power there comes, in the transfiguring soul of childhood, the Glory: the vision of accomplishment, the lofty ideal. Once let the strength of the motive work, and it becomes the life task of the parent to guide and to shape the ideal; to raise it from resentment and revenge to dignity and self-respect, to breadth and accomplishment, to human service; to beat back every thought of cringing and surrender.
Here, at last, we can speak with no hesitation, with no lack of faith. For we know that as the world grows better there will be realized in our children's lives that for which we fight unfalteringly, but vainly now.
Excerpted from the chapter "The Immortal Child" in his book, Darkwater.
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