Du Bois, Nietzsche and Double Consciousness: The African American Experience

Du Bois, Nietzsche and Double Consciousness:

The African American Experience

African Americans have been to hell and back. They have suffered from forced immigration(also known as involuntary immigration), two dreadful centuries of slavery and basically crawled through the dirt and mud to fight for their God given rights as human beings. They were chosen as slaves because of their physical appearance, cultural values and actions. Basically, everything that did not equate to the Europeans features and values were prime reasons. It is understood and deeply expressed how the dominant group feels about African Americans, but how does the African Americans feel? How should they feel? Whites brutally tortured them and made sure they knew that there was not any form of “equality” between them. African Americans suffering throughout these centuries, clutching to their feelings and thoughts that were and still are all derived from a single question; So, how does it feel to be a problem?

African Americans were not treated as African Americans and most of them were aware of this form of treatment. This awareness created a double consciousness. W.E.B. Du Bois, in this case, defines double consciousness as, “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others...an 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” (3). So the double consciousness of African Americans is kind of a split identity that they possess, meaning that their view of themselves and others view upon them are constantly in their thoughts, especially those who are aware of the vast differences between the two views. How do you live life as an “Negro” and an “American” without the two colliding? Because if the two parts ever do combine, the African American might have to face being, “cursed and spit upon by his fellows” or “having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.” This creates pressure on the African Americans to choose who to be, to play a part depending on who you are facing or talking to. The double consciousness did not make the African American experience pleasant, along with other detrimental situations in the process.

During the 19th and 20th centuries, deciding which part of your identity to play or which identity temporarily takes control seems to be essential for African Americans to reach some sort of “temporary progress” when dealing with the dominant ethnic group. Why is that so? Why should African Americans give up a part of their identity to satisfy the dominant group? Why should they have to choose whether or not to keep their values and culture or to destroy them or erase them from existence and assimilate into the dominant ethnic group. In Martin Marger’s Race and Ethnic Relations: American and

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