{"id":42,"date":"2021-11-15T21:49:47","date_gmt":"2021-11-15T21:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/?post_type=chapter&p=42"},"modified":"2024-08-17T16:19:27","modified_gmt":"2024-08-17T16:19:27","slug":"double","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/chapter\/double\/","title":{"rendered":"Double"},"content":{"raw":"

The Seventh Chapter,<\/strong>\r\nin which you ask yourself again,<\/strong>\r\n\u201cHow do I get out?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\r\n\r\n

\"\"<\/h3>\r\n

Preparation<\/strong><\/h3>\r\n

Required Reading: Jussim, \"Truth in Stereotypes<\/a>\" (Aeon<\/em>)<\/p>\r\n

Optional Reading: Perkowitz, \"Crimes of the Future\"<\/a> (Aeon<\/em>)<\/p>\r\n

Writing:<\/p>\r\n\r\n

    \r\n \t
  1. Jussim's key term is \"stereotype\" How does he define it? Answer with paraphrase, not quotation.<\/li>\r\n \t
  2. An argument is a\u00a0thesis <\/em>supported by one or more reasons<\/em>. <\/em>What is Jussim's thesis? What reason(s) does he provide in support of his thesis? Paraphrase or quote briefly.<\/li>\r\n \t
  3. What is your immediate reaction to Jussim's argument? Agreement, disagreement, or something else?<\/li>\r\n \t
  4. Respond to the following question by writing at least one paragraph:\u00a0If many stereotypes are largely accurate, is racial profiling defensible?\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\r\n<\/ol>\r\n\r\n
    \r\n\r\n

    Introduction<\/h3>\r\n
    I feel my soul as vast as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers; my chest has the power to expand to infinity. I was made to give and they prescribe for me the humility of a cripple.<\/div>\r\n

    That\u2019s another famous line from another famous book from the 20<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> century called White Skin, Black Masks<\/a>, <\/i>by Franz Fanon. Fanon was writing sixty years after W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk<\/i>, which is where the reading for this chapter comes from.\"\"<\/span><\/p>\r\n

    What does it feel like to get \u201cput in a box\u201d? It feels like Fanon says it feels. Cramped. Frustrated. Encased, trapped, imprisoned. \u201cBoxed in.\u201d Like someone is \u201ckeeping you down.\u201d Like someone is limiting <\/i>you. But what are they limiting? What are they keeping you from doing? Well, it\u2019s not just \u201cwhatever you want.\u201d Some of what you want is bad for you, so limits that keep you from getting what you want are good for you.\u00a0 <\/span>Fanon\u2019s talking about limits that keep you from getting or doing what you want, where \u201cwhat you want\u201d is good<\/i>. He says he\u2019s being prevented from being a good person, from being as good as he can be, from living a full rich human life. He\u2019s being kept from giving the world what he has to give, by the walls of a box that labels him as the kind of person who has nothing to offer. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

    Fanon ran in the same philosophical circles as Simone de Beauvoir (\u201cone is not born, but rather becomes, a woman). Beauvoir was writing about woman; Fanon was writing a black people; both were influenced by \u201cexistentialism,\u201d which said the point of life was to be free, and that being free wasn\u2019t necessarily the same thing as being happy. Fanon said: \u201cNo attempt must be made to encase man, for it is his destiny to be free.\u201d The thing is, a lot of these \u201cencasements\u201d come from our attempts to be happy<\/i>. We put ourselves in boxes because we\u2019d rather be \u201chappy\u201d than free; and when we put other people in boxes it\u2019s usually \u201cfor their own good.\u201d To get freedom, you might have to sacrifice happiness. <\/span><\/p>\r\n

    Freedom \u2014 what is it, though? Remember: so much depends on how you define your terms.<\/b> Positive or negative freedom; happiness one or happiness two. But Fanon gives us an idea here about what the goal is, an idea about which definitions he probably has in mind. Freedom is the freedom to do<\/i> something. It\u2019s freedom from limits, but the limits are limits not on your power to \u201cget what you want\u201d (which might make you \u201chappy\u201d). Freedom is your power to use your powers for good<\/i> in the world, with other people. And this is a lot like what Du Bois has in mind in the essay you\u2019re about to read. Du Bois says: <\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

    This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.<\/div>\r\n

    Think about that: Du Bois, a black man writing not long after the system of forced labor called \u201cslavery\u201d was ended, is writing about the freedom to work<\/i>. And to work with <\/i>others, including the former masters. Not freedom from needing to work; not freedom from your need for others. And knowing how to do the work \u2014 that\u2019s something you have to learn<\/i>, which is itself pretty hard work. Especially if you\u2019ve been kept in a box that says \u201cnot fit for learning due to color of skin.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\r\n

    Du Bois wants to be able to give what he has to those around him. That\u2019s the\u00a0 <\/span>freedom he seeks. So it\u2019s important that the reading starts with a story about someone rejecting<\/i> his gift. Like Fanon puts it; not allowing him to do what he was made to do; not allowing his chest to expand; prescribing for him the humility of a cripple. <\/span><\/p>\r\n\r\n

    \r\n\r\nW.E.B. Du Bois, \"Of Our Spiritual Strivings,\" from\u00a0The Souls of Black Folk<\/em><\/a>\r\n
    O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,\r\nAll night long crying with a mournful cry,\r\nAs I lie and listen, and cannot understand\r\nThe voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,\r\nO water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?\r\nAll night long the water is crying to me.\r\nUnresting water, there shall never be rest\r\nTill the last moon droop and the last tide fail,\r\nAnd the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;\r\nAnd the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,\r\nAll life long crying without avail,\r\nAs the water all night long is crying to me.<\/h6>\r\n

    - ARTHUR SYMONS.<\/p>\r\n

    \"\"Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half\u2013hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.<\/p>\r\n

    And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,\u2014peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys' and girls' heads to buy gorgeous visiting\u2013cards\u2014ten cents a package\u2014and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,\u2014refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination\u2013time, or beat them at a foot\u2013race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,\u2014some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison\u2013house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.<\/p>\r\n

    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\u2013sight in this American world,\u2014a world which yields him no true self\u2013consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double\u2013consciousness, 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,\u2014an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.<\/p>\r\n

    The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,\u2014this longing to attain self\u2013conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.<\/p>\r\n

    This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co\u2013worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man's turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,\u2014it is the contradiction of double aims. The double\u2013aimed struggle of the black artisan\u2014on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty\u2013stricken horde\u2014could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would\u2013be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice\u2013told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a\u2013dancing and a\u2013singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul\u2013beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,\u2014has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.<\/p>\r\n

    Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain\u2014Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,\u2014suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:\u2014<\/p>\r\n

    \"Shout, O children!\r\nShout, you're free!\r\nFor God has bought your liberty!\"\r\nYears have passed away since then,\u2014ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation's feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:\u2014<\/p>\r\n

    \"Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves\r\nShall never tremble!\"\r\nThe Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,\u2014a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.<\/p>\r\n

    The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,\u2014like a tantalizing will\u2013o'\u2013the\u2013wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku\u2013Klux Klan, the lies of carpet\u2013baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. So the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876 came, and left the half\u2013free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power,\u2014a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of \"book\u2013learning\"; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.<\/p>\r\n

    Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting\u2013place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self\u2013examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self\u2013consciousness, self\u2013realization, self\u2013respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,\u2014darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead\u2013weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half\u2013named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,\u2014not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.<\/p>\r\n

    A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the \"higher\" against the \"lower\" races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well\u2013nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all\u2013pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,\u2014before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom \"discouragement\" is an unwritten word.<\/p>\r\n

    But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self\u2013questioning, self\u2013disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self\u2013criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half\u2013men? Away with the black man's ballot, by force or fraud,\u2014and behold the suicide of a race! Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good,\u2014the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes' social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.<\/p>\r\n

    So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to\u2013day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world\u2013sea; there is within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the past,\u2014physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,\u2014all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,\u2014all false? No, not that, but each alone was over\u2013simple and incomplete,\u2014the dreams of a credulous race\u2013childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need to\u2013day more than ever,\u2014the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self\u2013defence,\u2014else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long\u2013sought, we still seek,\u2014the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,\u2014all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world\u2013races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty\u2013handed: there are to\u2013day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light\u2013hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good\u2013humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?<\/p>\r\n

    Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen's sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers' fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.<\/p>\r\n

    And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.<\/p>\r\n\r\n<\/div>\r\n

    Elaboration<\/h3>\r\n

    Where is Du Bois at the beginning? He\u2019s a child, at school, having fun with his friends. He\u2019s in Normal World. It\u2019s the unselfconscious world of \u201crollicking boyhood,\u201d blissful ignorance. And then, it\u2019s such a simple thing, such a little thing: an exchange of cards. Valentine\u2019s Day, maybe. And the one little white girl won\u2019t accept his card. And that is it: the \u201csudden revelation.\u201d The thing that shatters the illusion and shows him where he really is. He\u2019s in a world where people like him get put in a special box by people like her. For her, he was always in that box. But for him there was no box: not until he saw it. Now that he sees it, he feels the weight of the chains that were always there. He\u2019s self-conscious now, painfully self-conscious. And the thing that made him conscious of himself was becoming suddenly conscious of another person\u2019s image of himself. He got caught by the master-slave dialectic. Now he\u2019s trapped in double consciousness.<\/p>\r\n

    That\u2019s Du Bois\u2019 term for what Hegel was talking about. Makes it simpler, doesn\u2019t it? \u201cDouble consciousness.\u201d Your image of yourself is your image of the other person\u2019s image of you. When you\u2019re in Du Bois\u2019 position, it means a constant inner conflict, a struggle between the two images, the struggle to determine which image you\u2019re going to conform to.<\/p>\r\n

    That\u2019s the thing about double consciousness, about the master-slave dialectic. It\u2019s not just that you come to know what other people think about you, and maybe feel bad or good depending on what they think. It\u2019s that what they think exerts a real pressure on you. It\u2019s like Christine di Pizan said (in so many words): you become what other people think about you. The other person thinks you\u2019re a box; you know they think you\u2019re a box; you become the box they think you are. You lose the struggle to define yourself. You become the slave the master says you are. (And the same thing happens if you win: you become the master the slave bows down to.)<\/p>\r\n

    Du Bois says there are two ways out: two ways to try to end this inner conflict and integrate your mind. Option 1 is \u201ceither\/or.\u201d Either you accept only your own self-image, or you accept only the Other\u2019s image of yourself. Either you get to define yourself completely, or they do. Option two is \u201cneither\/nor.\u201d It\u2019s not one or the other; it\u2019s both. You don\u2019t get to define yourself completely, however you like: but neither do other people get to define you completely, however they like.<\/p>\r\n

    Remember: philosophers don\u2019t like either\/ors. Du Bois says you have to go with Option 2.<\/p>\r\n

    You read that first part, about the little girl, about the dawn of double consciousness, about realizing that you\u2019re the inferior in this particular cave, and you probably think don\u2019t let them tell you who you are! Don\u2019t let them put you in a box. And Du Bois feels that, definitely. When you get defined as less-than by other people, it seems like you\u2019ve got two ways to go. Either you give in and accept your status, stop fighting, lie down and take it; or you push back. \u201cYou don\u2019t know me!\u201d That\u2019s the temptation for anyone who\u2019s grown up in the nightmare, anyone whose cave is full of nightmares instead of daydreams. But what makes Du Bois a great man \u2014 and what makes him a philosophical man \u2014 is that he refuses that either\/or option, even though everyone would understand if he took it. Why?<\/p>\r\n

    Well, look: imagine what it would be like if you really and truly didn\u2019t give a f*&# about what anyone else thought, if you never felt any of that pressure that comes with knowing what other people think of you. There are words for that kind of person. \u201cArrogant\u201d is the tamest one. But \u201cstupid\u201d is another one. Remember, the master-slave dialectic is not what happens when we let other people show us who we are \u2014 Hegel\u2019s whole point is that we would never know ourselves without other people who can see us from the outside, to to speak. We need other people if we\u2019re going to pursue what Socrates thought was the goal of philosophy (\u201cknow thyself\u201d). No: the dialectic is what happens when we resent the fact that we need other people. It\u2019s what happens when we insist that no one else can know us.<\/p>\r\n

    Because other people can know you, actually, and you need them to know you if you\u2019re going to know yourself. If you won\u2019t let them, then you\u2019ll be stuck in absolute ignorance of yourself. You\u2019ll be stuck because you won\u2019t even know that you\u2019re ignorant. So you\u2019ll be arrogant, too. You\u2019ll think you know yourself, because you don\u2019t let other people \u201cget in your head.\u201d But really you don\u2019t know yourself at all, because you\u2019re \u201cstuck in your head.\u201d Du Bois doesn\u2019t want to escape double consciousness by turning into a person who\u2019s so intent on \u201cdefining himself\u201d that he can\u2019t learn from other people. He refuses to to trade the nightmare of powerlessness for a daydream of power, in which he alone gets to \u201cdefine himself.\u201d The truth is, no one has that power. And what Du Bois wants above all is truth. The truth about himself, the kind you get from living the examined life. That\u2019s what his \u201cspiritual striving\u201d is for.<\/p>\r\n

    On the other hand, it\u2019s still true that you can\u2019t let other people put you in a box. Or maybe we can put it differently: you can\u2019t let other people put you in a box that doesn\u2019t fit. The whole point, the point of living philosophically, the point of a real education, is to know yourself. So there\u2019s some \u201cknowledge\u201d involved, and that means there are words, concepts, ideas \u2014 boxes, in other words. You\u2019re this kind of person, you\u2019re that kind of person. It\u2019s not so much that boxes are bad \u2014 although maybe, just maybe, it might eventually be possible to do without the boxes completely, to just see \u201cthe person herself,\u201d to be seen as just yourself, without any ideas getting between people. But that\u2019s hard \u2014 maybe you have to be all the way outside the cave for that (more on that in chapter 12). In the mean time you\u2019re going to have to use words to describe other people, and other people are going to have to use words to describe you, and so the thing is to make the words true. So you can\u2019t let other people tell lies about you. You can\u2019t accept a distorted image of yourself. If you\u2019re looking in the mirror they hold up in front of you, it\u2019s not going to help you \u201cknow yourself\u201d it that mirror is one of those fun-house mirrors that distorts your face. You can\u2019t let that get into your head.<\/p>\r\n

    The whole question, then is how to tell the lies from the truth. How to distinguish the truths you tell about yourself, from the lies you tell about yourself; and how to distinguish the truths they tell about yourself, from the lies they tell. They\u2019re going to see things you can\u2019t see; and you\u2019re going to see things they can\u2019t see. But this stuff isn\u2019t going to be totally clear. It\u2019s not going to be like math: the difference between \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d isn\u2019t going to rest on a \u201cCorrect Answer.\u201d That\u2019s not how self-knowledge works. You\u2019re not a bunch of numbers. You don\u2019t add up that way. And how do you tackle questions that don\u2019t have Correct Answers? Right: philosophy. This is what philosophical thinking is for.<\/p>\r\n

    Du Bois says it\u2019s neither\/nor. It\u2019s both\/and. This is the way out of the master-slave dialectic, the way to avoid repeating history, where it\u2019s just slaves revolting and becoming the new masters, and then their slaves revolting and becoming the new masters, and it\u2019s all about power power power, nothing but the constant fight to keep other people from defining us. The both\/and option - which requires careful, philosophical thinking, to separate the lies from the truth, the illusions from the realities \u2014 takes us away from that and toward mutuality. That\u2019s the goal. You don\u2019t want to be a slave; but you don\u2019t want to be a master, either. You want friendship. Philosophy aims for self-knowledge that can only be found in friendship. So philosophy isn\u2019t just puzzles you solve on your own. Philosophy can only happen in a certain kind of community, where there\u2019s neither domination nor servility. No masters and no slaves. In Du Bois\u2019 words, it\u2019s a community where everyone gets to be a \u201cco-worker in the kingdom of culture.\u201d Du Bois is answering the question of political philosophy. This is how he thinks we should live together.<\/p>\r\n

    But! (There\u2019s always a \u201cbut,\u201d isn\u2019t there.) The real difficulty is that to do this \u2014 to practice philosophy, to build friendship \u2014 you have to learn how to do it. And learning means being taught. It means having a teacher. And the thing about learning from a teacher is that doesn\u2019t really feel very \u201cmutual,\u201d does it. It\u2019s not master and slave \u2014 but there is a kind of hierarchy there. The teacher tells you things about yourself that maybe you don\u2019t want to hear, or maybe you didn\u2019t realize about yourself. The teacher isn\u2019t just another person; the teacher is also someone who is \u2014 hopefully \u2014 better at seeing the person you are, and what you, specifically, need to do if you\u2019re going to grow \u2014 if you\u2019re going to get out of your own personal cave. The teacher, if she\u2019s a good teacher, if she deserves to be your teacher at all \u2014 she knows better than you. And if you can\u2019t admit that, you can\u2019t learn from her.<\/p>\r\n

    So \u201clearning\u201d can feel a lot like \u201csubmitting.\u201d For people who\u2019ve been oppressed, like Du Bois, it can be especially hard, because it can feel like you\u2019re just giving in, letting the teacher tell you who you are, confirming the teacher\u2019s (false) image of you. It can feel like you\u2019re falling right back into the pattern you\u2019re trying to escape. Du Bois deals head on with this. In his world, black people have been denied their freedom by white people who saw them as not good enough to be free. They\u2019ve lived for centuries without freedom, with the experience of it, without the experience of practicing it (and freedom does take practice!). One response to that is to push back and say: \u201cno, I am good enough to be free.\u201d But that\u2019s not what Du Bois does. He tries to tell the truth about himself. He says: \u201cI\u2019m not yet good enough to be free, precisely because I\u2019ve not been free.\u201d<\/p>\r\n

    (You think that sounds like justifying what the white people did? No way. It makes what white people did worse. That\u2019s what Hegel wants you to see. The master makes the person into the slave he sees; he makes his illusion into reality. It\u2019s a horror show.)<\/p>\r\n

    Did you notice how Du Bois talks about the two kinds of freedom, negative and positive? He says that so many black people put so much stock in the first kind of freedom, the negative kind: freedom-from the literal chains that had kept them down. They lived for centuries in deprivation, not able to get what they wanted. Now, suddenly, those obstacles are gone, so they get obsessed with getting what they want. That\u2019s what freedom means to them. But Du Bois says this is the wrong path. What they\u2019ve really been deprived of is positive freedom: freedom-to. Not freedom to do what they want, but freedom to learn to want new things. Now that they\u2019re free to leave the plantation, they need to find the freedom to leave the cave that the planation put in their hearts. That means getting rid of the nightmares that the white people used to make them slaves. That\u2019s one of the things philosophy can do: wake you up from nightmares. But it also means learning from anyone \u2014 black or white \u2014 who can help you not just see through illusions, but see to the truth. It means finding teachers.<\/p>\r\n

    Philosophy, a philosophical education, requires humility. And it\u2019s hard, almost unimaginably hard, for a person who\u2019s been humiliated to be humble. (This is what makes an act of humiliation so horrible.) Being humble, being humiliated: two different things that can feel awfully similar. The difference is this. To be humiliated is to be made to feel less than you truly are, to be forced to believe a lie about yourself. To be humble is to see that you are less than you could become: to admit a truth about yourself. You can\u2019t become anything greater without acknowledging that you\u2019re not there yet. You can\u2019t escape the cave unless you acknowledge that you\u2019re still inside, that you\u2019re not out yet.<\/p>\r\n

    Du Bois sees the difference, and shows you the path. The path that philosophy might take out of the master-slave dialectic, out of the constant game of comparison, the constant struggle to define the other before he can define you, out of the world where you\u2019re either a winner or a loser of that struggle. A world where you can finally just be yourself \u2014 because you have friends who make that possible.<\/p>\r\n

    Does that sound like a world you want to live in?<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

    \r\n\r\n

    Reflection<\/h3>\r\n
      \r\n \t
    1. What is \"double consciousness\"? Write at least 250 words. Paraphrase; do not quote. In your answer, refer to Hegel's \"master-slave dialectic\" and to Christine di Pizan's \"slander.\" How are these three concepts connected?<\/li>\r\n<\/ol>","rendered":"

      The Seventh Chapter,<\/strong>
      \nin which you ask yourself again,<\/strong>
      \n\u201cHow do I get out?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \"\"<\/h3>\n

      Preparation<\/strong><\/h3>\n

      Required Reading: Jussim, “Truth in Stereotypes<\/a>” (Aeon<\/em>)<\/p>\n

      Optional Reading: Perkowitz, “Crimes of the Future”<\/a> (Aeon<\/em>)<\/p>\n

      Writing:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Jussim’s key term is “stereotype” How does he define it? Answer with paraphrase, not quotation.<\/li>\n
      2. An argument is a\u00a0thesis <\/em>supported by one or more reasons<\/em>. <\/em>What is Jussim’s thesis? What reason(s) does he provide in support of his thesis? Paraphrase or quote briefly.<\/li>\n
      3. What is your immediate reaction to Jussim’s argument? Agreement, disagreement, or something else?<\/li>\n
      4. Respond to the following question by writing at least one paragraph:\u00a0If many stereotypes are largely accurate, is racial profiling defensible?\u00a0<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
        \n

        Introduction<\/h3>\n
        I feel my soul as vast as the world, truly a soul as deep as the deepest of rivers; my chest has the power to expand to infinity. I was made to give and they prescribe for me the humility of a cripple.<\/div>\n

        That\u2019s another famous line from another famous book from the 20<\/span>th<\/sup><\/span> century called White Skin, Black Masks<\/a>, <\/i>by Franz Fanon. Fanon was writing sixty years after W.E.B. Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk<\/i>, which is where the reading for this chapter comes from.\"\"<\/span><\/p>\n

        What does it feel like to get \u201cput in a box\u201d? It feels like Fanon says it feels. Cramped. Frustrated. Encased, trapped, imprisoned. \u201cBoxed in.\u201d Like someone is \u201ckeeping you down.\u201d Like someone is limiting <\/i>you. But what are they limiting? What are they keeping you from doing? Well, it\u2019s not just \u201cwhatever you want.\u201d Some of what you want is bad for you, so limits that keep you from getting what you want are good for you.\u00a0 <\/span>Fanon\u2019s talking about limits that keep you from getting or doing what you want, where \u201cwhat you want\u201d is good<\/i>. He says he\u2019s being prevented from being a good person, from being as good as he can be, from living a full rich human life. He\u2019s being kept from giving the world what he has to give, by the walls of a box that labels him as the kind of person who has nothing to offer. <\/span><\/p>\n

        Fanon ran in the same philosophical circles as Simone de Beauvoir (\u201cone is not born, but rather becomes, a woman). Beauvoir was writing about woman; Fanon was writing a black people; both were influenced by \u201cexistentialism,\u201d which said the point of life was to be free, and that being free wasn\u2019t necessarily the same thing as being happy. Fanon said: \u201cNo attempt must be made to encase man, for it is his destiny to be free.\u201d The thing is, a lot of these \u201cencasements\u201d come from our attempts to be happy<\/i>. We put ourselves in boxes because we\u2019d rather be \u201chappy\u201d than free; and when we put other people in boxes it\u2019s usually \u201cfor their own good.\u201d To get freedom, you might have to sacrifice happiness. <\/span><\/p>\n

        Freedom \u2014 what is it, though? Remember: so much depends on how you define your terms.<\/b> Positive or negative freedom; happiness one or happiness two. But Fanon gives us an idea here about what the goal is, an idea about which definitions he probably has in mind. Freedom is the freedom to do<\/i> something. It\u2019s freedom from limits, but the limits are limits not on your power to \u201cget what you want\u201d (which might make you \u201chappy\u201d). Freedom is your power to use your powers for good<\/i> in the world, with other people. And this is a lot like what Du Bois has in mind in the essay you\u2019re about to read. Du Bois says: <\/span><\/p>\n

        This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.<\/div>\n

        Think about that: Du Bois, a black man writing not long after the system of forced labor called \u201cslavery\u201d was ended, is writing about the freedom to work<\/i>. And to work with <\/i>others, including the former masters. Not freedom from needing to work; not freedom from your need for others. And knowing how to do the work \u2014 that\u2019s something you have to learn<\/i>, which is itself pretty hard work. Especially if you\u2019ve been kept in a box that says \u201cnot fit for learning due to color of skin.\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

        Du Bois wants to be able to give what he has to those around him. That\u2019s the\u00a0 <\/span>freedom he seeks. So it\u2019s important that the reading starts with a story about someone rejecting<\/i> his gift. Like Fanon puts it; not allowing him to do what he was made to do; not allowing his chest to expand; prescribing for him the humility of a cripple. <\/span><\/p>\n

        \n

        W.E.B. Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” from\u00a0The Souls of Black Folk<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

        O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
        \nAll night long crying with a mournful cry,
        \nAs I lie and listen, and cannot understand
        \nThe voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
        \nO water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
        \nAll night long the water is crying to me.
        \nUnresting water, there shall never be rest
        \nTill the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
        \nAnd the fire of the end begin to burn in the west;
        \nAnd the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the sea,
        \nAll life long crying without avail,
        \nAs the water all night long is crying to me.<\/h6>\n

        – ARTHUR SYMONS.<\/p>\n

        \"\"Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter round it. They approach me in a half\u2013hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.<\/p>\n

        And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,\u2014peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first bursts upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea. In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting\u2013cards\u2014ten cents a package\u2014and exchange. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,\u2014refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination\u2013time, or beat them at a foot\u2013race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head,\u2014some way. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison\u2013house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.<\/p>\n

        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\u2013sight in this American world,\u2014a world which yields him no true self\u2013consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double\u2013consciousness, 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,\u2014an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.<\/p>\n

        The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,\u2014this longing to attain self\u2013conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.<\/p>\n

        This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co\u2013worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty Negro past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,\u2014it is the contradiction of double aims. The double\u2013aimed struggle of the black artisan\u2014on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty\u2013stricken horde\u2014could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would\u2013be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice\u2013told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a\u2013dancing and a\u2013singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul\u2013beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,\u2014has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.<\/p>\n

        Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song and exhortation swelled one refrain\u2014Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand. At last it came,\u2014suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences:\u2014<\/p>\n

        “Shout, O children!
        \nShout, you’re free!
        \nFor God has bought your liberty!”
        \nYears have passed away since then,\u2014ten, twenty, forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast. In vain do we cry to this our vastest social problem:\u2014<\/p>\n

        “Take any shape but that, and my firm nerves
        \nShall never tremble!”
        \nThe Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,\u2014a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.<\/p>\n

        The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,\u2014like a tantalizing will\u2013o’\u2013the\u2013wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host. The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku\u2013Klux Klan, the lies of carpet\u2013baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for freedom. As the time flew, however, he began to grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty with which war had partially endowed him. And why not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this? A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom. So the decade flew away, the revolution of 1876 came, and left the half\u2013free serf weary, wondering, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the following years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power,\u2014a powerful movement, the rise of another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fire by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of “book\u2013learning”; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; longer than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to overlook life.<\/p>\n

        Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly, heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn. It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the inches of progress here and there, noted also where here and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no resting\u2013place, little but flattery and criticism, the journey at least gave leisure for reflection and self\u2013examination; it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self\u2013consciousness, self\u2013realization, self\u2013respect. In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose before him, and he saw himself,\u2014darkly as through a veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead\u2013weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half\u2013named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,\u2014not simply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal defilement of Negro women had stamped upon his race, meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of the Negro home.<\/p>\n

        A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defence of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower” races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well\u2013nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all\u2013pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil,\u2014before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom “discouragement” is an unwritten word.<\/p>\n

        But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but bring the inevitable self\u2013questioning, self\u2013disparagement, and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repression and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate. Whisperings and portents came home upon the four winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of education, since we must always cook and serve? And the Nation echoed and enforced this self\u2013criticism, saying: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what need of higher culture for half\u2013men? Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,\u2014and behold the suicide of a race! Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of good,\u2014the more careful adjustment of education to real life, the clearer perception of the Negroes’ social responsibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of progress.<\/p>\n

        So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and stress to\u2013day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the world\u2013sea; there is within and without the sound of conflict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The bright ideals of the past,\u2014physical freedom, political power, the training of brains and the training of hands,\u2014all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong,\u2014all false? No, not that, but each alone was over\u2013simple and incomplete,\u2014the dreams of a credulous race\u2013childhood, or the fond imaginings of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power. To be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one. The training of the schools we need to\u2013day more than ever,\u2014the training of deft hands, quick eyes and ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot we need in sheer self\u2013defence,\u2014else what shall save us from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long\u2013sought, we still seek,\u2014the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty,\u2014all these we need, not singly but together, not successively but together, each growing and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil two world\u2013races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack. We the darker ones come even now not altogether empty\u2013handed: there are to\u2013day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit of the Declaration of Independence than the American Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy tales and folklore are Indian and African; and, all in all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness. Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspeptic blundering with light\u2013hearted but determined Negro humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial good\u2013humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the Sorrow Songs?<\/p>\n

        Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiritual striving of the freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race, in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers, and in the name of human opportunity.<\/p>\n

        And now what I have briefly sketched in large outline let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen to the striving in the souls of black folk.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

        Elaboration<\/h3>\n

        Where is Du Bois at the beginning? He\u2019s a child, at school, having fun with his friends. He\u2019s in Normal World. It\u2019s the unselfconscious world of \u201crollicking boyhood,\u201d blissful ignorance. And then, it\u2019s such a simple thing, such a little thing: an exchange of cards. Valentine\u2019s Day, maybe. And the one little white girl won\u2019t accept his card. And that is it: the \u201csudden revelation.\u201d The thing that shatters the illusion and shows him where he really is. He\u2019s in a world where people like him get put in a special box by people like her. For her, he was always in that box. But for him there was no box: not until he saw it. Now that he sees it, he feels the weight of the chains that were always there. He\u2019s self-conscious now, painfully self-conscious. And the thing that made him conscious of himself was becoming suddenly conscious of another person\u2019s image of himself. He got caught by the master-slave dialectic. Now he\u2019s trapped in double consciousness.<\/p>\n

        That\u2019s Du Bois\u2019 term for what Hegel was talking about. Makes it simpler, doesn\u2019t it? \u201cDouble consciousness.\u201d Your image of yourself is your image of the other person\u2019s image of you. When you\u2019re in Du Bois\u2019 position, it means a constant inner conflict, a struggle between the two images, the struggle to determine which image you\u2019re going to conform to.<\/p>\n

        That\u2019s the thing about double consciousness, about the master-slave dialectic. It\u2019s not just that you come to know what other people think about you, and maybe feel bad or good depending on what they think. It\u2019s that what they think exerts a real pressure on you. It\u2019s like Christine di Pizan said (in so many words): you become what other people think about you. The other person thinks you\u2019re a box; you know they think you\u2019re a box; you become the box they think you are. You lose the struggle to define yourself. You become the slave the master says you are. (And the same thing happens if you win: you become the master the slave bows down to.)<\/p>\n

        Du Bois says there are two ways out: two ways to try to end this inner conflict and integrate your mind. Option 1 is \u201ceither\/or.\u201d Either you accept only your own self-image, or you accept only the Other\u2019s image of yourself. Either you get to define yourself completely, or they do. Option two is \u201cneither\/nor.\u201d It\u2019s not one or the other; it\u2019s both. You don\u2019t get to define yourself completely, however you like: but neither do other people get to define you completely, however they like.<\/p>\n

        Remember: philosophers don\u2019t like either\/ors. Du Bois says you have to go with Option 2.<\/p>\n

        You read that first part, about the little girl, about the dawn of double consciousness, about realizing that you\u2019re the inferior in this particular cave, and you probably think don\u2019t let them tell you who you are! Don\u2019t let them put you in a box. And Du Bois feels that, definitely. When you get defined as less-than by other people, it seems like you\u2019ve got two ways to go. Either you give in and accept your status, stop fighting, lie down and take it; or you push back. \u201cYou don\u2019t know me!\u201d That\u2019s the temptation for anyone who\u2019s grown up in the nightmare, anyone whose cave is full of nightmares instead of daydreams. But what makes Du Bois a great man \u2014 and what makes him a philosophical man \u2014 is that he refuses that either\/or option, even though everyone would understand if he took it. Why?<\/p>\n

        Well, look: imagine what it would be like if you really and truly didn\u2019t give a f*&# about what anyone else thought, if you never felt any of that pressure that comes with knowing what other people think of you. There are words for that kind of person. \u201cArrogant\u201d is the tamest one. But \u201cstupid\u201d is another one. Remember, the master-slave dialectic is not what happens when we let other people show us who we are \u2014 Hegel\u2019s whole point is that we would never know ourselves without other people who can see us from the outside, to to speak. We need other people if we\u2019re going to pursue what Socrates thought was the goal of philosophy (\u201cknow thyself\u201d). No: the dialectic is what happens when we resent the fact that we need other people. It\u2019s what happens when we insist that no one else can know us.<\/p>\n

        Because other people can know you, actually, and you need them to know you if you\u2019re going to know yourself. If you won\u2019t let them, then you\u2019ll be stuck in absolute ignorance of yourself. You\u2019ll be stuck because you won\u2019t even know that you\u2019re ignorant. So you\u2019ll be arrogant, too. You\u2019ll think you know yourself, because you don\u2019t let other people \u201cget in your head.\u201d But really you don\u2019t know yourself at all, because you\u2019re \u201cstuck in your head.\u201d Du Bois doesn\u2019t want to escape double consciousness by turning into a person who\u2019s so intent on \u201cdefining himself\u201d that he can\u2019t learn from other people. He refuses to to trade the nightmare of powerlessness for a daydream of power, in which he alone gets to \u201cdefine himself.\u201d The truth is, no one has that power. And what Du Bois wants above all is truth. The truth about himself, the kind you get from living the examined life. That\u2019s what his \u201cspiritual striving\u201d is for.<\/p>\n

        On the other hand, it\u2019s still true that you can\u2019t let other people put you in a box. Or maybe we can put it differently: you can\u2019t let other people put you in a box that doesn\u2019t fit. The whole point, the point of living philosophically, the point of a real education, is to know yourself. So there\u2019s some \u201cknowledge\u201d involved, and that means there are words, concepts, ideas \u2014 boxes, in other words. You\u2019re this kind of person, you\u2019re that kind of person. It\u2019s not so much that boxes are bad \u2014 although maybe, just maybe, it might eventually be possible to do without the boxes completely, to just see \u201cthe person herself,\u201d to be seen as just yourself, without any ideas getting between people. But that\u2019s hard \u2014 maybe you have to be all the way outside the cave for that (more on that in chapter 12). In the mean time you\u2019re going to have to use words to describe other people, and other people are going to have to use words to describe you, and so the thing is to make the words true. So you can\u2019t let other people tell lies about you. You can\u2019t accept a distorted image of yourself. If you\u2019re looking in the mirror they hold up in front of you, it\u2019s not going to help you \u201cknow yourself\u201d it that mirror is one of those fun-house mirrors that distorts your face. You can\u2019t let that get into your head.<\/p>\n

        The whole question, then is how to tell the lies from the truth. How to distinguish the truths you tell about yourself, from the lies you tell about yourself; and how to distinguish the truths they tell about yourself, from the lies they tell. They\u2019re going to see things you can\u2019t see; and you\u2019re going to see things they can\u2019t see. But this stuff isn\u2019t going to be totally clear. It\u2019s not going to be like math: the difference between \u201ctrue\u201d and \u201cfalse\u201d isn\u2019t going to rest on a \u201cCorrect Answer.\u201d That\u2019s not how self-knowledge works. You\u2019re not a bunch of numbers. You don\u2019t add up that way. And how do you tackle questions that don\u2019t have Correct Answers? Right: philosophy. This is what philosophical thinking is for.<\/p>\n

        Du Bois says it\u2019s neither\/nor. It\u2019s both\/and. This is the way out of the master-slave dialectic, the way to avoid repeating history, where it\u2019s just slaves revolting and becoming the new masters, and then their slaves revolting and becoming the new masters, and it\u2019s all about power power power, nothing but the constant fight to keep other people from defining us. The both\/and option – which requires careful, philosophical thinking, to separate the lies from the truth, the illusions from the realities \u2014 takes us away from that and toward mutuality. That\u2019s the goal. You don\u2019t want to be a slave; but you don\u2019t want to be a master, either. You want friendship. Philosophy aims for self-knowledge that can only be found in friendship. So philosophy isn\u2019t just puzzles you solve on your own. Philosophy can only happen in a certain kind of community, where there\u2019s neither domination nor servility. No masters and no slaves. In Du Bois\u2019 words, it\u2019s a community where everyone gets to be a \u201cco-worker in the kingdom of culture.\u201d Du Bois is answering the question of political philosophy. This is how he thinks we should live together.<\/p>\n

        But! (There\u2019s always a \u201cbut,\u201d isn\u2019t there.) The real difficulty is that to do this \u2014 to practice philosophy, to build friendship \u2014 you have to learn how to do it. And learning means being taught. It means having a teacher. And the thing about learning from a teacher is that doesn\u2019t really feel very \u201cmutual,\u201d does it. It\u2019s not master and slave \u2014 but there is a kind of hierarchy there. The teacher tells you things about yourself that maybe you don\u2019t want to hear, or maybe you didn\u2019t realize about yourself. The teacher isn\u2019t just another person; the teacher is also someone who is \u2014 hopefully \u2014 better at seeing the person you are, and what you, specifically, need to do if you\u2019re going to grow \u2014 if you\u2019re going to get out of your own personal cave. The teacher, if she\u2019s a good teacher, if she deserves to be your teacher at all \u2014 she knows better than you. And if you can\u2019t admit that, you can\u2019t learn from her.<\/p>\n

        So \u201clearning\u201d can feel a lot like \u201csubmitting.\u201d For people who\u2019ve been oppressed, like Du Bois, it can be especially hard, because it can feel like you\u2019re just giving in, letting the teacher tell you who you are, confirming the teacher\u2019s (false) image of you. It can feel like you\u2019re falling right back into the pattern you\u2019re trying to escape. Du Bois deals head on with this. In his world, black people have been denied their freedom by white people who saw them as not good enough to be free. They\u2019ve lived for centuries without freedom, with the experience of it, without the experience of practicing it (and freedom does take practice!). One response to that is to push back and say: \u201cno, I am good enough to be free.\u201d But that\u2019s not what Du Bois does. He tries to tell the truth about himself. He says: \u201cI\u2019m not yet good enough to be free, precisely because I\u2019ve not been free.\u201d<\/p>\n

        (You think that sounds like justifying what the white people did? No way. It makes what white people did worse. That\u2019s what Hegel wants you to see. The master makes the person into the slave he sees; he makes his illusion into reality. It\u2019s a horror show.)<\/p>\n

        Did you notice how Du Bois talks about the two kinds of freedom, negative and positive? He says that so many black people put so much stock in the first kind of freedom, the negative kind: freedom-from the literal chains that had kept them down. They lived for centuries in deprivation, not able to get what they wanted. Now, suddenly, those obstacles are gone, so they get obsessed with getting what they want. That\u2019s what freedom means to them. But Du Bois says this is the wrong path. What they\u2019ve really been deprived of is positive freedom: freedom-to. Not freedom to do what they want, but freedom to learn to want new things. Now that they\u2019re free to leave the plantation, they need to find the freedom to leave the cave that the planation put in their hearts. That means getting rid of the nightmares that the white people used to make them slaves. That\u2019s one of the things philosophy can do: wake you up from nightmares. But it also means learning from anyone \u2014 black or white \u2014 who can help you not just see through illusions, but see to the truth. It means finding teachers.<\/p>\n

        Philosophy, a philosophical education, requires humility. And it\u2019s hard, almost unimaginably hard, for a person who\u2019s been humiliated to be humble. (This is what makes an act of humiliation so horrible.) Being humble, being humiliated: two different things that can feel awfully similar. The difference is this. To be humiliated is to be made to feel less than you truly are, to be forced to believe a lie about yourself. To be humble is to see that you are less than you could become: to admit a truth about yourself. You can\u2019t become anything greater without acknowledging that you\u2019re not there yet. You can\u2019t escape the cave unless you acknowledge that you\u2019re still inside, that you\u2019re not out yet.<\/p>\n

        Du Bois sees the difference, and shows you the path. The path that philosophy might take out of the master-slave dialectic, out of the constant game of comparison, the constant struggle to define the other before he can define you, out of the world where you\u2019re either a winner or a loser of that struggle. A world where you can finally just be yourself \u2014 because you have friends who make that possible.<\/p>\n

        Does that sound like a world you want to live in?<\/p>\n

        \n

        Reflection<\/h3>\n
          \n
        1. What is “double consciousness”? Write at least 250 words. Paraphrase; do not quote. In your answer, refer to Hegel’s “master-slave dialectic” and to Christine di Pizan’s “slander.” How are these three concepts connected?<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"menu_order":3,"template":"","meta":{"pb_show_title":"on","pb_short_title":"","pb_subtitle":"","pb_authors":[],"pb_section_license":""},"chapter-type":[],"contributor":[],"license":[],"part":32,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/42"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/chapter"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":251,"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/42\/revisions\/251"}],"part":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/parts\/32"}],"metadata":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapters\/42\/metadata\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"chapter-type","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/pressbooks\/v2\/chapter-type?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"contributor","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/contributor?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"license","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/pressbooks.dbq.edu\/bigquestions\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/license?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}