2023-24
Mitra FAMILY GRANT Recipient
A Double-Edged Sword: Exploring the Viability of Du Bois’s Solutions for Double Consciousness
Daphne AvkarogullariA Double-Edged Sword: Exploring the Viability of Du Bois’s Solutions for Double Consciousness
Daphne Avkarogullari
2024 Mitra Scholar
Mentors: Mr. James Tate and Mrs. Lauri Vaughan April 10, 2024
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, more commonly referred to as W.E.B. Du Bois, first introduced the notion of African American double consciousness in his 1897 article “Strivings of the Negro People” in The Atlantic. 1 He later expanded upon the concept in his most well-known work, Souls of Black Folk, primarily in the first chapter, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings ”2 Alongside double consciousness, Du Bois introduces an assortment of related philosophical concepts within his 1903 title: the “color line,” which refers to the divide between the categories of white and Black; “The Veil,” a metaphorical obstruction preventing Black people from existing within both realms of Black and American; and the broader notion of the duality of African American existence.3 Ernest Allen Jr. classifies the sense of duality that Du Bois refers to in Souls, into three distinct categories: “double consciousness,” “second sight,” and most remaining terms, including “double ideals,” “double aims,” “double thoughts,” “double strivings,” “twoness,” and “two souls.” 4
While Du Bois's “talented tenth” and suggestions regarding education and economic advancement for Black Americans address the racialized economic and social hierarchy that contributes to Black double consciousness, they fail to overcome the undermining effect of double consciousness on Black leaders’ abilities to promote ends expressing the collectively shared spirit of Blacks and to avoid domination by a Western or white person
1 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, "Strivings of the Negro People," The Atlantic (Boston, MA), August 1897, 194, accessed January 25, 2024, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1897/08/strivings-of-the-negropeople/305446/.
2 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (North Charleston, SC: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2014), 5
3 Du Bois, 3-5, 7.; Bonnyeclaire Smith-Stewart, "Hypocrisy in the Life of W.E.B. Du Bois: Reconstructing Selective Memory," Phylon (1960-) 51, no. 1 (2014): 58, JSTOR.
4 Ernest Allen, Jr, "Ever Feeling One's Twoness: 'Double Ideals' and 'Double Consciousness' in The Souls of Black Folk," Contributions in Black Studies 9, no. 1 (1992): 56, accessed January 25, 2024, https://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1108&context=cibs
In defining double consciousness, which will serve as the primary term to refer to the duality experienced by African Americans due to their two conflicting identities, disagreement over the meaning of double consciousness remains, primarily due to the contradictions that arise later in Du Bois’s Souls of Black Folks alongside other works, such as Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil and his ambiguous use of double consciousness and related terms outlined by Ernest Allen Jr.5 However, almost all definitions of double consciousness include the idea of two warring or differing consciousnesses, where the difference between the two creates the cognitive dissonance from which Black suffering arises. 6 Despite Du Bois’s assertion that double consciousness extends to all Black individuals, the two warring ideals that lead to strife appear to be byproducts of American and African identities, so this paper will primarily be discussing double consciousness in reference to its applications to African Americans 7 Pittman’s definition is the definition of double consciousness that will be employed over the course of this paper:
Double consciousness is identified as a “sensation”, a consciousness of one’s self, but which falls short of a unified, “true” self-consciousness. It is part of a more complex feeling of “two-ness”, of disparate and competing “thoughts”, “strivings”, and “ideals”. This is not an episodic or occasional sensation, but a persistent form of consciousness. Ascribed to “the Negro in this American world”, it is a socio-cultural construct rather than a baldly bio-racial given, attributed specifically to people of African descent in America. The “two-ness” of which it is a consciousness thus is not inherent, accidental,
5 Allen, "Ever Feeling," 59-60.
6 Dickson D. Bruce, "W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness," American Literature 64, no. 2 (1992): 304-305, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2927837
7 Du Bois, The Souls, 5.
nor benign: the condition is presented here as both imposed and fraught with psychic danger.8
As the author of the section title “Double Consciousness,” Pittman summarizes the salient points of contention regarding the definition of double consciousness and successfully condenses the plethora of discourse around the meaning into one definition that directly quotes Du Bois’s description of the concept in Souls of Black Folk Despite the widespread use of this definition, it faces a critique which disagrees with the notion that double consciousness arises from opposing ideals. Scholars disagreeing with the more broadly used definition, such as Allen usually assert that the duality and subsequent internal conflict within Black Americans is due to “conflicted deliberation concerning the actual ability of Black people to hold ideals” with the “question ultimately turning upon the recognition of Black folk as human beings.”9 Since the subject of this paper is not the definition of double consciousness, Pittman’s all-encompassing, middle-of-thepath definition provides the flexibility to discuss double consciousness in a manner that is largely applicable to other scholarship and that does not distract from the central argument of the paper by requiring a separate discussion of the definition’s stance.10
To overcome double consciousness, a “merging of strivings'' must occur and Black Americans must gain acknowledgement as “co-workers in the kingdom of culture,” but so long as they continue to “measure [their] soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” they’ll remain in a state of double consciousness As Trudi Witonsky explains, to be a
8 John P. Pittman, "Double Consciousness," in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, spring 2023 ed., ed. Edward N. Zalta and Uri Nodelman (Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University, 2023), last modified February 16, 2023, accessed August 12, 2023, https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2023/entries/double consciousness/.
9 Ernest Allen, Jr., "Du Boisian Double Consciousness: The Unsustainable Argument," The Massachusetts Review 43, no. 2 (2002): 230, JSTOR.
10 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
co-worker in the kingdom of culture means “to participate in the U.S. democratic, national culture as fellow citizens, and to develop whatever talents and abilities they have, without being killed or ostracized.”11 Therefore, overcoming double consciousness provides a basis for African Americans to achieve true equality within social and political contexts. Additionally, “Du Bois's idea of transcending and reconciling double-consciousness provides a viable strategy for addressing the psychological oppression historically imposed on African Americans and offers a framework.”12 The end goal and product of transcending double consciousness is to address the “psychological oppression” that the condition causes and to allow African Americans to achieve equality within America. Du Bois believed that psychological freedom was just as important for the advancement of African Americans as social or political freedom or progress.13 Pittman summarizes Robert Gooding-William’s perspectives regarding the practical implications of double consciousness in Gooding William’s In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America: “equality grounded in reciprocal recognition cannot be won without eradicating the basis for double consciousness;” this invokes the question of how double consciousness might be resolved.
Du Bois’s vagueness when discussing the notion of double consciousness allows him to present a class of educated elite, a Talented Tenth, as a potential solution to this strife.14 Du Bois expands upon the importance of education in Souls of Black Folk, describing its importance in overcoming double consciousness to counter the “prejudices” and “stamp out those that in
11 Trudi Witonsky, "To Be a Co-Worker in the Kingdom of Culture," The CEA Forum 42, no. 1 (2013): 179, accessed April 11, 2024, https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1007518.pdf.
12 Derrick P. Alridge, "Guiding Philosophical Principles for a DuBoisian-Based African American Educational Model," The Journal of Negro Education 68, no. 2 (1999): 188, http://www.jstor.org/stable/2668124
13 Rutledge M. Dennis, "Du Bois and the Role of the Educated Elite," The Journal of Negro Education 46, no. 4 (1977): 395, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2966959.
14 Allen, "Du Boisian," 228-229
barbarity deafen us to the wail of prisoner souls within the Veil.”15 The role ascribed to the Talented Tenth is to serve as the leaders of the Black American population whose leadership allows the rest of the community to overcome their own double consciousness and challenge the prejudices imposed upon African Americans.16 Du Bois later revised his concept of the Talented Tenth, altering it to a talented hundredth, but the first version of this strategy will be explained in further detail in the next section.17
How will this Talented Tenth overcome their own double consciousness? While he attempts to point to education as a potential solution to the group’s double consciousness, Du Bois’s suggestions for their education and general Black education is fraught with problems. Du Bois fails to prove that educating the Talented Tenth will be sufficient in allowing them to overcome their own double consciousness.18 Separately, there remains a central contradiction within the notion of double consciousness and the ability of the Black elite to overcome it: “how is it possible for Du Bois's designated leadership class to achieve desired recognition as human beings and political progress?”19
Black Leadership and the Educated Elite
Throughout his career, W.E.B. maintained that the Talented Tenth was crucial in uplifting Black Americans:
15 Du Bois, The Souls, 44.
16 Du Bois, The Souls, 78.; Smith-Stewart, "Hypocrisy in the Life," 62-68.”
17 Dan S. Green and Earl Smith, "W.E.B. Du Bois and the Concepts of Race and Class," Phylon (1960-) 44, no. 4 (1983): 264-265, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2966779.; Rutledge M. Dennis, "Continuities and Discontinuities in the Social and Political Thought of W.E.B. Du Bois," Research in Race and Ethnic Relations 9 (July 1996): 395396, https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334376275_Continuities_and_Discontinuities_in_the_Social_and_Politica l_Thought_of_WEB_Du_Bois_Research_in_Race_Vol_9.
18 Allen, "Ever Feeling," 59, 61-62.; Dan S. Green, "W. E. B. Du Bois' Talented Tenth: A Strategy for Racial Advancement," The Journal of Negro Education 46, no. 3 (1977): https://www.jstor.org/stable/2966779
19 Allen, "Du Boisian," 235.
Can the masses of the Negro people be in any possible way more quickly raised than by the effort and example of this aristocracy of talent and character. . . . Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters. The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving up to their vantage ground.20 Du Bois characterizes a member of the Talented Tenth as a college-educated African American who will serve as “the group leader, the man who sets the ideals of the community where he lives, directs its thoughts and heads its social movements.” These individuals will lead the path toward “slowly and painfully evolving” to develop certain attributes that Du Bois argued African Americans lacked and needed “social leadership more than most groups, “traditions to fall back upon,” “long established customs,” “strong family ties,” and “well defined social classes.”21 Du Bois warns that, if the cultural training necessary to build a group of such leaders is not carried out or Black Americans fail to “furnish this race from within its own ranks with thoughtful men of trained leadership," Black Americans “must suffer the evil consequences of a headless misguided rabble.” 22 However, this required that the Talented Tenth possess a “willingness to work and make personal sacrifices for solving the problems [of the race].”23 Ultimately, Du Bois’s perception of the Talented Tenth’s inability to perform the work and suffer the sacrifices required to uplift the entire race later forced him to reassess his initial conceptualization of the Talented Tenth and educated elite, though he maintained the conviction
20 William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, The Problem of the Color Line at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: The Essential Early Essays, ed. Nahum Dimitri Chandler, American Philosophy Series (New York City, NY: Fordham University Press, 2014), 217, https://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/harker-ebooks/detail.action?docID=3239952.
21 Du Bois, 223.
22 Du Bois, 227
23 W.E.B Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth: The Re-examination of a Concept," August 12, 1948, MS 312, W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries: Special Collections and University Archives, Amherst, MA.
that the leadership of an advanced intellectual class of Black Americans was necessary to achieve political, social, and ontological progress for Black Americans.24
It is also important to recognize the discussion of elitism that arose out of Du Bois’s suggestion that the “educated, property-owning” group of Black Americans should serve as the leadership group to uplift all Black Americans and who Du Bois suggested would serve as the bridge that would allow for the dissolution of the color line. The “two most consistent critiques” regarding why Du Bois’s double consciousness was potentially elitist were that he believed only those of means could become members of his cadre of elites and that he was cultivating an entourage of elites who would only seek individual gain at the expense of the masses.”25
Juan Battle and Earl Wright II argue that the “Talented Tenth was not designed to be an exclusionary group” while Rutledge Dennis and Willard B. Gatewood believe that uneducated Black Americans should not be included in this leadership class was inherently elitist 26 Whether Du Bois's conception is elitist is not an issue that will be fleshed out in this paper, for it was not the a primary motivation for Du Bois’s remodeling his concept of the Talented Tenth in its second stage. As years passed since he first published his essay “The Talented Tenth” had and he poured so much time and energy toward unsuccessfully advocating for the emergence of a Talented Tenth, Du Bois began “to doubt whether this group could play any role in the reconstruction of the internal (Black) world; he thought even less of its possible positive role in the reconstruction of the external (White) world.”27
24 Dennis, "Du Bois," 389.
25 Juan Battle and Earl Wright, "W.E.B. Du Bois's Talented Tenth: A Quantitative Assessment," Journal of Black Studies 32, no. 6 (2002): 656-657, http://www.jstor.org.harker.idm.oclc.org/stable/3180968.;
26 Battle and Wright, 655.; Willard B. Gatewood, "W.E.B. Du Bois: Elitist as Racial Radical," The Georgia Historical Quarterly 78, no. 2 (1994): 311, JSTOR.; Dennis, "Du Bois," 389.
27 Dennis, "Du Bois," 389.
Both the general unwillingness of highly educated Black individuals who had the qualifications or profile to join the Talented Tenth to sacrifice themselves for the long-term goals of racial equity, and the minimal progress any contemporary members of the Talented Tenth had in uplifting the Black population were the primary reasons for Du Bois’s abandonment of his first, more practically applicable model of the Talented Tenth 28
In discussing the implications of Du Bois’s use of Black Leadership and the Black educated elite as a tool for racial advancement, one must acknowledge the shift in Du Bois’s characterization of the educated elite, including and beyond the Talented Tenth, for “an analysis of Du Bois's writings on the concept during the later phase of his life indicates some marked changes from that developed in his early essays and book.” While Du Bois’s notion of the role of the educated elite remained consistent, Dennis asserts that “the ‘failures’ of this particular group” ultimately led him to “attempt to transform the idea from its theoretical conception to a more utilitarian definition in order to test its potential practical applicability.”29
However, analysis regarding the Talented Tenth in this paper will be restricted to the early phase of the Talented Tenth’s conception, as defined by Dennis (1897-1904) because, as Dennis details, beyond this point the concept lost its practical applications.30 However, this does not imply that there was not an abstract component within Du Bois’s initial conceptualization of the Talented Tenth and what they must undertake to uplift the rest of Black Americans. Wright and Battle explicate the role that idea of the Talented Tenth played in changing the social and psychological conditions and perception of Black Americans beyond practical applications such as legislation: “ Although Du Bois proposed that college-educated African Americans lead the
28 Dennis, 397.
29 Dennis, 388.
30 Dennis, 388.
struggle for African American freedom, it was to be a struggle that would recognize the humanity of African Americans rather than one in which those called on to help save the group would perversely become active participants in the exploitation and underdevelopment of the people they were called to save.”31 Thus, use of the early phase does not restrict the important implications of the Talented Tenth regarding double consciousness and, on the contrary, allows for consideration of both the practical or concrete ways in which Du Bois attempts to utilize the Talented Tenth to uplift Black Americans from their psychological, social, financial, and political oppression, which should include overcoming their double consciousness.
For the Talented Tenth and educated elite to be integral to the rest of African Americans uplifting themselves and overcoming their double consciousness, the conception of the Talented Tenth presented by Du Bois must at minimum meet two logical conditions: (1) the concept of the Talented Tenth must be achievable (2) the Talented Tenth must be capable of overcoming their own double consciousness if they are to lift the rest of the African American population out of their double consciousness. If neither of these conditions are met, then the ability of the Talented Tenth to serve the integral role which Du Bois intends them to in the collective Black struggle to overcome double consciousness. More broadly, Du Bois fails to provide any other detailed or developed methods for how education is to overcome double consciousness.
The Educated Elite: An Unviable Solution
There are three primary issues regarding the viability of the Talented Tenth both as a concept and a method for overcoming double consciousness: (1) the white acknowledgement required for the Talented Tenth to lead America to “recognize the humanity of African Americans,” (2) Black leaders’ inability to overcome their own double consciousness and (3) the
31 Battle and Wright, "W.E.B. Du Bois's," 655.
32
lack of necessary resources, ranging from education to educated elite willing to self-sacrifice for the greater cause of helping the African American population.
White Recognition: The Impossible Issue
As Pittman summarizes in his encyclopedia entry on double consciousness, GoodingWilliams presents double-consciousness as a “false self-consciousness” arising through second sight exercised in conditions of a racially prejudiced dominant culture. This false consciousness can make way for a “true self-consciousness” only when those conditions have been transformed and whites no longer perceive blacks as “contemptible” or “inferior” (for only then will the Negro’s “second sight” reflect a perception of himself undistorted by prejudice).
33
However, white recognition is crucial to the Talented Tenth’s ability to resolve their own double consciousness and the double consciousness of the African American population insofar as “this eventuality, neither inevitable nor unattainable, requires the achievement of reciprocal recognition that has been denied the Negro by the white ‘other world’ throughout American history.” Thus, Gooding-Williams describes white recognition as a “prime object of the Du Boisian political project.”34
Du Bois intends for the educated elite to elicit the sympathy and respect of the white population, which does not imply an imitation of Anglo-Saxon ideals. In the first chapter of Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois describes one facet of “the double-aimed struggle of the Black
32 Battle and Wright, "W.E.B. Du Bois's," 655.
33 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
34 Pittman
artisan” as the struggle to “escape white contempt.”35 Du Bois indicates that white acknowledgement is necessary to overcome the color line and for Black Americans to progress: It is not enough for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white South to reply that their social condition is the main cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can improve to any great extent. The Negro cannot stand the present reactionary tendencies and unreasoning drawing of the color-line indefinitely without discouragement and retrogression. . . . Only by a union of intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the Republic shall justice and right triumph.
36
In the absence of this simultaneous change with the views of the Black and white populations of America, Du Bois finds that, even when confronted with evidence of Black Americans who have defied the beliefs held by white Americans about them, Black Americans’ Blackness itself leads the white Americans to inherently attribute to them the characteristics of “ignorance, shiftlessness, poverty, and crime” and “trea[t] [Black Americans] like the lowest of their people, simply because they are Negroes.”
37 In the “Forethought” of Souls of Black Folk Du Bois establishes the color line as the “the problem of the Twentieth” which is the basis for the issues associated with the “strange meaning of being Black.” Du Bois then proceeds to outline the issues under the broader “problem of the color line,” including the Veil and double consciousness.38 Du Bois’s claim that the resolution of the color line is impossible without the sympathy and acknowledgement by white Americans of their prejudice, for “even if Black
35 Du Bois, The Souls, 5.
36 Du Bois, 88.
37 Du Bois, 88.
38 Du Bois, 3
Americans improve their “social condition,” this alone is not sufficient for bringing about “the desired effect.” and “neither can improve to any great extent” in the absence of the other. Since the color line is the basis for double consciousness or the fundamental problem that gives rise to double consciousness, this means that the resolution of double consciousness relies on white acknowledgement.
Du Bois attempts to utilize the educated elite to bring about the white acknowledgement: “We cannot hope . . . that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the Blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership . . . must come from the Blacks themselves.”
39 Du Bois then elaborates that “if such men are to be effective, they must have some power, they must be…able to wield for their objects and aims such weapons.” Du Bois fails to provide a clear image as to how this power will bring about white acknowledgment or whether obtaining it is a more passive process or requires the Talented Tenth to take a certain course of action. Regardless, it is apparent that double consciousness would hinder the ability to obtain white acknowledgement passively or through direct action. Obtaining white recognition will not bring about equality if double consciousness is still present: “overcoming of double consciousness is a necessary and sufficient condition for the achievement of full equality: equality grounded in reciprocal recognition cannot be won without eradicating the basis for double consciousness.”40
The Tenth’s Struggle to Overcome Double Consciousness
The necessity for this power brings about a significant contradiction: How is it possible for Du Bois's designated leadership class to achieve desired recognition as human beings and wield power if their Blackness, under the perspective of double consciousness, prevents them
39 Du Bois, 81.
40 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
from being recognized as human despite being the most privileged strata?41 Additionally, it has been established that, in order for the Talented Tenth to pull the masses out of the psychological state imposed by double consciousness, they themselves must already have overcome their own double consciousness. If white recognition is integral to overcoming double consciousness, but in order to get white recognition and acquire the power and influence necessary for the Talented Tenth must demonstrate that they have transcended double consciousness and stepped beyond the veil, they are both pre-requisites to each other, creating an impossible situation.42 The crisis of double consciousness for the Talented Tenth becomes a crisis for the entire nation, as Du Bois establishes the Talented Tenth as the individuals who would “save” the “race.”43
While Du Bois suggests education as the method through which the Talented Tenth will overcome their double consciousness, he states the necessity for Black teachers in his essay the “Talented Tenth.” In their absence, an education that failed to acknowledge the African or Black aspect of being African American would not be sufficient in bringing about the recognition of both ideals necessary to overcome double consciousness. Alternatively, an education that failed to acknowledge the Black aspect of Black Americans state of being could also lead to educated Black Americans to “only see themselves and their people through the eyes of the dominant population.”44 Du Bois details in Souls the negatives associated with only acknowledging one of the two warring ideals within Black Americans: “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 . . . without having the doors of Opportunity
41 Allen, "Du Boisian," 233-235
42 Allen, "Ever Feeling," 59, 64-65
43 Du Bois, The Problem, 218
44 Allen, "Ever Feeling," 64.
closed roughly in his face.” Thus, a Western education that neglects the African side of African Americans cannot resolve their double consciousness.
The Reality of Educating the Talented Tenth
However, if education must acknowledge the African aspect of Black Americans but such an education requires Black educators–members of the Talented Tenth who have overcome their own double consciousness through education– then both requirements are pre-requisites to each other. Ultimately, this suggests that education is insufficient to allow the Talented Tenth to overcome their double consciousness. This is further confirmed by Du Bois’s depictions of the failures of two members of the Talented Tenth who failed to overcome their own double consciousness: Alexander Crummell and John Jones. Ultimately, this circles back to the previous issue: if the Talented Tenth cannot overcome their own double consciousness, they cannot uplift the rest of the Black population from their state of double consciousness. Additionally, Du Bois claims that the support of the educated elite is necessary for Black striving to be productive: “unless his striving be not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group, he cannot hope for great success.”45 However, the educated elite’s failure to meet his expectations, which caused his later shift in thought in regards to the Talented Tenth, implies that, even if education is a viable solution for double consciousness, it requires the mobilization of the Talented Tenth. The striving Du Bois refers to in the quest for education evokes the striving he describes in his description of double consciousness: “the end of [Black individuals] striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture.” If education is a part of this striving but cannot be achieved absent the aid of the educated elite, Du Bois’s proposed solution to double consciousness rests on the
45 Du Bois, The Souls, 30.
assumption that the educated elite were able to overcome their own double consciousness and that the elite were willing to help. However, as mentioned earlier, “the ‘failures’ of this particular group” lead him to re-evaluate his understanding of the educated elite’s role in social progress and his initial conceptualization of the Talented Tenth, as more utopian and theoretical, because of their selfishness, lack of cooperation and success.46 Additionally, Du Bois fails to provide a viable method for the Talented Tenth to overcome their own double consciousness.
In the absence of the Talented Tenth, the prospect of the rest of the African American population’s uplift and the possibility of overcoming their double consciousness is foreboding, as Du Bois ends his essay “The Talented Tenth” with this warning: “Whether you like it or not the millions are here, and here they will remain. If you do not lift them up, they will pull you down.”47 Du Bois directs this statement towards the Talented Tenth to serve as a call to action “because of his belief that immediate social and political action was necessary to forestall any movement to chip away the foundation of an already weakened Black economic and political position.”
48
Examples from Souls of Black Folk
In his own descriptions of Black leaders, one hypothetical and one real, Du Bois demonstrates the near impossible nature of his solution of having Black leaders overcome their own double consciousness, which is necessary for their ability to lead the Black population toward progress. Alexander Crummell serves as a mentor figure to Du Bois who unsuccessfully attempted to establish his own congregation after being rejected by the Episcopal Theological Seminary due to his Blackness. The fictional character of John Jones in “Of the Coming of
46 Dennis, "Du Bois," 388.
47 Du Bois, The Problem, 74-75.
48 Dennis, "Du Bois," 393.
John,” a chapter in the Souls of Black Folk, is a young Black man who attempts to seek an education, which ultimately leads to his disconnect with the Black community and violence towards him by white people fearful of an educated Black man. Both are “doubly alienated figures:” “educated [men] of culture who fin[d] [themselves] equally estranged” from both the Black and white communities that they interact with. For Jones, due to the racism he experiences at the hands of the white community members around him and his rejection of the religious spirit of the Black community along with the divide he feels due to his education, “Jones cannot be an effective Black political leader.”49
Crummell’s story serves as a cautionary tale about “Hate,” “Despair,” and “Doubt.”50 As Gooding-Williams describes, “Du Bois shows how a Negro leader’s double consciousness can alienate him from the ethos of the black folk and subvert his leadership.”51 Initially, Crummell resists the temptation of despair after rejection from the Episcopal Theological Seminary and establishes his own church. Largely due to a lack of Black people in the region, when his church fails due to steadily declining attendance. He is then directed to Bishop Onderdonk in Philadelphia who agrees to accept Crummell into his diocese on the condition that “ . . . no Negro priest can sit in my church convention, and no Negro church must ask for representation there.”52 After this experience of racial discrimination, Crummell “turned and passed into the Valley of the Shadow of Death. Despite his “physical dying,” such as his “shattered frame” and “hacking cough,” “in [Crummell’s] soul lay deeper death than that.”53 Thus Crummell represents
49 Robert Gooding-Williams, "Du Bois, Politics, Aesthetics: An Introduction," Public Culture 17, no. 2 (2005): 209210, accessed April 11, 2024, https://read.dukeupress.edu/public-culture/article/17/2/203/50105/Du-Bois-PoliticsAesthetics-An-Introduction.; Allen, "Ever Feeling," 62-64.
50 Du Bois, The Souls, 101.
51 Robert Gooding-Williams, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2022), 97, ProQuest Ebook Central.
52 Du Bois, The Souls, 104.
53 Du Bois, 105.
the “strife” of the “American Negro” which is central to Du Bois’s concept of double consciousness. Crummell represents the impossibility of being “both a Negro and an American, without . . . having the doors of Opportunity close roughly in [one’s] face” associated with double consciousness. Crummell falls victim to “the temptation of Despair” when he is told that “The General Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church cannot admit a Negro.”54 Greatly altered by the seminary’s act of racial discrimination, Crummell loses purpose in his life and spends the rest of his life trying to rediscover his purpose:
So the man groped for light; all this was not Life, it was the world-wandering of a soul in search of itself, the striving of one who vainly sought his place in the world, ever haunted by the shadow of a death that is more than death, the passing of a soul that has missed its duty
Du Bois reflects on the sorrow of Crummell’s lack of opportunity to teach the invaluable lessons that he feels Crummell provided him to others: “his name to-day, in this broad land, means little…and herein lies to sorrow the age.”
55
Ultimately, for both John Jones and Alexander Crummell, their double consciousness “vitiati[ed] their effectiveness as leaders of the freedom struggle.”56 In presenting depictions of Black leaders whose double consciousness hindered them from making an impact on the struggle for Black progress, Du Bois perhaps unintentionally indicates a key issue with the Talented Tenth serving as a solution for double consciousness: the Black leaders may be
54 Du Bois, 102-103,104,
55 Du Bois, 105.
56 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
unable to overcome their own double consciousness, preventing them from uplifting the rest of the Black population.
Education
Regardless of whether the Talented Tenth will successfully facilitate the establishment of the educational system required for Black uplift, Du Bois’s suggestions regarding education as a solution for double consciousness must be examined independently. In emphasizing the importance of classical education in not only permitting the Talented Tenth to overcome their own double consciousness and for Black Americans to achieve the political progress necessary to overcome the color line, Du Bois’s methodology for doing so runs into several contradictions itself. He suggests Black progress must be made and its focus on Western education, which inherently perpetuates the ideals of the American consciousness at the cost of Black ideals. This suggests that neither solution for double consciousness is viable because they are either preconditions for the other or the methodology Du Bois utilizes is flawed. Other than the educated elite, education is the prominent solution that Du Bois offers for the condition of double consciousness. This conclusion fosters further discussion of whether a solution to double consciousness exists to begin with and whether American and Black components of the state of being African American can be reconciled at all.
Du Bois addresses that potential problems exist within the contemporary system of education, but he asserts that the question of how education most rapidly can uplift Black Americans should take precedence over the debate about the best system of education.57 Du Bois’s lack of acknowledgement of the problems within the system of education and how they perpetuate what he claims is the source of double consciousness creates the most salient issue
57 Du Bois, The Problem, 59-60.
within the solution for double consciousness that Du Bois presents in education. Although in the section “Of the Meaning of Progress” in Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois describes his experience establishing a school in the “hills of Tennessee” and teaching the local Black children, Du Bois primarily focuses on secondary and higher education when discussing the importance of education for the progress for the Black community in his scholarship.58 The specific schools Du Bois refers to are not industrial schools. He expresses that he advocates for industrial education, but he believes that the first object of education is “to give the group and community in which he works, liberally trained teachers and leaders to teach him and his family what life means” and “the second is to give him sufficient intelligence and technical skill.”59 If the primary purpose is ignored, education will successfully bring about the group uplift necessary for African American progress and for resolving double consciousness.
To achieve these objectives, Du Bois outlines the advances that must occur within the sphere of Black Education:
The first object demands the Negro college and college-bred men not a quantity of such colleges, but a few of excellent quality; not too many college-bred men, but enough to leaven the lump, to inspire the masses, to raise the Talented Tenth to leadership; the second object demands a good system of common schools, well-taught, conveniently located and properly equipped.60
The issue with Du Bois’s conceptualization of education relevant to the notion of double consciousness is that while Du Bois advocates for an Africana-focused education, this is near
58 Du Bois, The Souls, 31-36.
59 Du Bois, The Problem, 227.
60 Du Bois, 227-228
impossible to achieve within primarily or all-Black institutions and even more improbably at predominantly white institutions.
Africana Education
Although Du Bois advocates for Africana-focused education, his methods for its application are nonexistent, both in Souls of Black Folk but also later works. Du Bois suggests that Black teachers, which he believes will come from the Talented Tenth, teach Black students about African history. As Rabaka elucidates, this theory “proves impoverished and inadequate when one reflects on the fact that most people of African descent have few if any opportunities to do the very ‘cultural study’ he asserts is such an integral part of the Africana pedagogical process. Further, “his philosophy of education is in no uncertain terms asking ‘teachers [to] teach that which they have learned in no American school’” which indicates that Du Bois understands that “first, that his philosophy of education was at loggerheads with Western European and European American educational thought and practice and second, that his philosophy of education did not ask but demand Africana educators to go above and beyond their training in Western European and European American history . . . and so forth and re-root themselves in African history and culture and African.”
Although Du Bois had the opportunity to travel globally and connect with many prominent African and African American thinkers and educators, this is not accessible to most Black intellectuals, so Du Bois provides no viable method for the Talented Tenth to be educated in African and African American culture and history, an area of research which was and continues to be neglected by the broader historical community. Rabaka encapsulates the limitations and lack of a possible method for implementation of Du Bois’s Africana education:
If indeed the talented tenth “rises and pulls all that are worth saving up to their vantage ground” and if, as Du Bois intimated, the talented tenth are often educated “not with reference to what we can be, but with sole reference to what somebody [else] wants us to be” then “to whose vantage ground will the talented tenth be pulling up the Black masses?” and additionally. “how will the talented tenth pull up the Black masses to their vantage ground” when "they have no traditions to fall back upon, no long established customs, no strong family ties, [and] no well defined social classes."61
Thus, without any way of educating the Talented Tenth and therefore the Black masses in Black history, the education which Black Americans will realistically end up receiving will be unable to prevent the compromising of Black history or “bleach[ing]” of the Black “soul in a flood of white Americanism,” particularly since Du Bois frequently stressed the urgency of educating Black Americans as demonstrated to his response to Booker T. Washington.62
Lessons in A Log Hut
Despite emphasizing of the importance of Africana education, when Du Bois is presented with the opportunity to establish a school within a log hut in Tennessee and teach the local Black children, he does not teach them about their African origins. Most of the children gradually stop attending school, diverted by pressing life circumstances or a need to support their families. While these children were unable to overcome their double consciousness, Du Bois describes the communities partial awareness of the Veil: “there was among us but a half-awakened common consciousness, sprung from common joy and grief, at burial, birth, or wedding; from a common hardship in poverty, poor land, and low wages; and, above all, from the sight of the Veil that
61 Reiland Rabaka, "W. E. B. Du Bois's Evolving Africana Philosophy of Education," Journal of Black Studies 33, no. 4 (2003): 399-449, JSTOR.
62 Du Bois, The Souls, 5
hung between us and Opportunity.” Despite their awareness of the Veil, Du Bois’s continually has to convince the community of the importance of education: “when the doubts of the old folks about book-learning had conquered again, and so, toiling up the hill, and getting as far into the cabin as possible, I put Cicero ‘pro Archia Poeta’ into the simplest English with local applications, and usually convinced them for a week or so.” Additionally, Du Bois is unable to absolve the life or economic circumstances that prevent many of the children from attending school.63 So, whether it is their inability to fully commit to their education due to external factors, the insufficient nature of the education the children received from Du Bois due to its lack of emphasis on the African aspect of their identity, or the community and children’s parents’ disregard for the importance of education, Du Bois’s experiences teaching at the log hut demonstrate that, even when provided with the opportunity for education, the conditions of Black America render it useless or it may be insufficient in addressing the issue of double consciousness, preventing education from being a generally applicable solution to solving double consciousness.
A Race Left Behind in the Race for Wealth
Du Bois implies that with the rate at which capitalism is shifting the nature of industry and the Southern economy will forever condemn Black Americans an inferior position relative to white America if they do not receive education in a timely. Mainly referring to sharecropping, Du Bois asserts that Black tenants and Black workers, more broadly, are perpetually behind in an economic sense in comparison to their white counterparts due to continual debt to most frequently a white landlord and being stuck in a “system” that “is bound to bankrupt the tenant.”64 Du Bois largely attributes the necessity for Black Americans to rely on sharecropping
63 Du Bois, 34-35
64 Du Bois, 70.
to both the white American’s drive to maintain some form of labor resembling slavery within the constraints of the post-emancipation legislation and, significantly, a lack of wealth and “ignorance.”65
This ignorance is not a byproduct of any character trait intrinsic to Black Americans, contrary to what white Americans may suggest. Instead, it is mainly because “two-thirds of [the Black population] cannot read or write.”66 Attributing it to educational deficiencies, however, ties the issue of the Black population’s growing economic disparity to double consciousness. Du Bois suggests that the Talented Tenth is instrumental in bringing about the white support and mobilizing the nation to establish educational centers for Black Americans. However, not only was the Talented Tenth unwilling to participate in many of the movements Du Bois hoped they would, but they also were not able to overcome their own double consciousness. The Talented Tenth was therefore limited in their capabilities to garner white support, bring about racial equality, and provide the Africana curriculum that Du Bois believed was vital at the schools established for Black Americans. Thus, Black Americans will be trapped in a cycle of debt, continually behind their white counterparts and with the economic disparity between the two groups continually widening.67
Additionally, in the chapter of Souls of Black Folk titled “The Wings of Atlanta,” Du Bois describes how the growth of the pursuit of “material prosperity” in the South is spreading and how white Americans will increasingly subjugate Black Americans in the pursuit of wealth: Atlanta must not lead the South to dream of material prosperity as the touchstone of all success; already the fatal might of this idea is beginning to spread; it is replacing the finer
65 Du Bois, 68,71.
66 Du Bois, 68
67 Green and Smith, "W.E.B. DuBois," 266-267.
type of Southerner with vulgar money-getters . . . For every social ill the panacea of Wealth has been urged, wealth to overthrow the remains of the slave feudalism; wealth to raise the “cracker” Third Estate; wealth to employ the Black serfs, and the prospect of wealth to keep them working.68 Furthermore, with no viable method of bringing the educational system necessary for them to expand their economic and career opportunities soon, most Black Americans will remain in debt, passing it on to each subsequent generation. Insofar as an education is not sufficient to provide the majority of Black Americans with a way to escape the never-ending cycle of debt accompanying the profession of sharecropping, African Americans laborers will not only be stuck in debt but also will face continually increasing difficulty to overcome the economic obstacles they are presented with due to their race.69 So long as the Talented Tenth is unable to overcome their double consciousness, an educational system will likely not be established in a timely manner that would allow Black workers to escape the impacts of the “fatal might of” the “dream of material prosperity as the touchstone of all success” in the South. Instead, Du Bois explains that the notion of the "panacea of Wealth” will be increasingly employed to keep Black Americans in economic subjugation, instilling within them the belief that wealth is the solution “for every social ill.” By blaming economic issues for the strife Black Americans’ experience and thus hindering Black Americans from realizing that “measur[ing] [one’s] soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” is the primary reason for Black Americans are unable to be “co-workers in the kingdom of culture,” this shift within the South would reinforce Black Americans’ double consciousness.70
68 Du Bois, The Souls, 39.
69 Green and Smith, "W.E.B. DuBois," 266-267.
70 Du Bois, The Souls, 5-6.
Regardless of whether overcoming one’s double consciousness is a requirement to catch up with the white population economically, Du Bois’s description of this movement in the South where “every social ill” can be solved by wealth has important implications for the timeline within which Black Americans can achieve equality and potentially overcome their double consciousness. Du Bois claims that the establishment of any sort of sufficient education system for Black Americans will be near impossible or too slow in the absence of the influence of the Talented Tenth who are not only hindered by their double consciousness but also their unwillingness to provide aid, which was a key reason why Du Bois gradually moved away from the concept over the course of his career.71 Even if the Talented Tenth were able to eventually overcome their double consciousness, this shift may occur too late to solve the economic disparity between white and Black Americans Due to the capitalistic shift in the South in which wealth is viewed as the universal solution and leaves sharecroppers indefinitely indebted, Blacks will be so deeply entrenched in subjugation that even education cannot save them. Du Bois describes a lack of education as the biggest factor weighing African Americans down, more than economic reasons: “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, not 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.”72
Wide economic disparity continues to exist between Black and white Americans today despite access to education, including education in Black history. Granted, redlining and unequal financing for various school districts still create barriers for Black students to have truly equal access to education. However, considering the ineffectual nature of the Talented Tenth in Du
71 Dennis, "Du Bois," 397.
72 Du Bois, The Souls, 7.
Bois’s time, this could suggest that educational reforms arrived too late to solve racial economic disparity and inequality that persists today. Thus, even if education or the Talented Tenth eventually became viable solutions to overcome double consciousness and psychosocial inequality, these changes may be far too late to solve the issue of deeply entrenched economic inequality and therefore be unable to bring about true total equality.
Double consciousness persists even today. L.E. Walker presents an overall assessment of double consciousness in the modern day, describing how “current society has inserted a similar incompatibility directly into our definition of what-it-is-to-be-black” and analyzing the relationship between double consciousness and the use of the modern term “Oreo.”73 An empirical approach appears to be the most prevalent approach to evaluating double consciousness among modern African American scholarship. Sheena Walker assesses double consciousness among contemporary African American men through an empirical approach, concluding “the sample as a whole is already engaging in double-consciousness,74 adhering to values within both hegemonic societies as well as with African American culture. Both sources suggest that double consciousness is an issue that persists despite modern reforms and education and an increase in the number of influential Black leaders. The increasing economic disparity created a level of inequality that the modern emergence of Black leaders and widespread public education arrived too late or was not sufficient to allow the African American population to overcome their double consciousness.
73 L.E Walker, "Double Consciousness in Today's Black America," Stance: An International Undergraduate Philosophy Journal 12, no. 1 (2019): 121-122, https://philarchive.org/archive/EWADCI.
74 Sheena Myong Walker, "Empirical Study of the Application of Double-Consciousness among African-American Men," Journal of African American Studies 22, no. 2/3 (2018): 213, https://www.jstor.org/stable/45200254
Overall Assessment of Solutions
Two of Du Bois’s primary solutions for double consciousness, the Talented Tenth or educated elite and secondary and college education more broadly, appear to be either hindered by double consciousness or are necessary to resolve double consciousness but lack a viable method for implementation. From this arises two primary questions: can double consciousness be overcome at all, and can Black Americans achieve significant sociopolitical progress without resolving their double consciousness. While the first question requires an assessment of whether double consciousness is a phenomenon experienced by all Black Americans, Du Bois’s own assertion that “to be a co- worker in the kingdom of culture" is the "end" of the Black Americans "striving” suggests that overcoming their double consciousness is necessary or the “striving” of the African American community for progress to truly come to an end 75 Gooding-Williams reaffirms this conclusion, finding that “the overcoming of double consciousness is a necessary and sufficient condition for the achievement of full equality: equality grounded in reciprocal recognition cannot be won without eradicating the basis for double consciousness.”76
While the question of whether or not double consciousness can be solved with the structural violence towards Black Americans built into the foundation of the United States, it appears that, in presenting the concept of double consciousness, Du Bois intended to provide a solution as well: the first stage of the Talented Tenth was intended to be a practical, politically applicable, and viable solution, hence why Dennis contrasts it to his later more utopian one 77
Because a key piece of double consciousness is how in “looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” Black Americans are “measuring [their] soul by the tape of a world that looks on
75 Du Bois, The Souls, 5-6.
76 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
77 Dennis, "Du Bois," 389, 395.
in amused contempt and pity,” and even if these advancement improves how Black people view themselves and their material position and even opportunities, they may be unable to change how society views them and thus unable to respond double consciousness.
Future Prognosis of Double Consciousness
Although Du Bois’s final assessment of the prospects for social justice, in which he says, “Chin up and fight on,” and “realize that American Negroes can’t win,” could be read as Du Bois’s skepticism toward Black American’s prospects of improving their condition, including overcoming their double consciousness. This statement can alternatively be read as a final moment of advocacy for the importance of Pan-Africanism. “Notice what Du Bois does not say. He doesn't say that Negroes can't win; he says that American Negroes can't win. I read this at once as an affirmation of his Pan-African commitments and as a final recognition that ‘winning’ for Negroes . . . has to mean rejecting the idea of America, at least as it stands.”78
The paradoxes within The Souls of Black Folk regarding the concept of double consciousness and the solutions which Du Bois presents render the solutions provided unviable, but not unvaluable. Holt suggests that perhaps the paradoxes within Du Bois’s work may be representative of the paradoxical nature of being Black in America: Du Bois's paradoxical positions may be taken as somehow emblematic of the AfricanAmerican experience generally African-Americans live a kind of paradox embodied in their very lives, which are shaped profoundly by conflicts of identity and purpose. Although this paradox of crosscutting racial and national identities articulates differently
78 Paul C. Taylor, "What's the Use of Calling Du Bois a Pragmatist?," Metaphilosophy 35, no. 1/2 (2004): 101, JSTOR.
79
within different class strata, it marks the lives of all African-Americans because all experience racial alienation in some form social, economic, or political.
Holt’s implication that the paradoxical nature of being Black and American, or double consciousness, creates paradoxes within the positions taken regarding Black Americans. Proposals for their advancement may explain the contradictions within Souls itself and between Souls and Du Bois’s earlier or later works as he attempted to tackle the paradoxical experience of being African American.
If double consciousness is a systemic issue, it would be impossible to resolve the issue of double consciousness within the current state of society without reconstructing the basis upon which our present society operates. Scholarship on how double consciousness continues to impact the African American community to this day, as mentioned previously in the section “A Race Left Behind in the Race for Wealth.”
Ultimately, in the absence of a viable solution provided by Du Bois, an individual seeking to resolve the psycho-social ailment of double consciousness may seek to formulate their own potential solutions or renovate those provided by Du Bois, such as Gooding-Williams or Frank Kirkland. Other scholars contend that the way Du Bois defined double consciousness prevented any solution from being viable. Henry Louis Gates Jr., who suggests that the cultural multiplicity is the key to overcoming double consciousness. While the bases of different scholars’ arguments range from questioning whether every African American experiences double consciousness to whether double consciousness is exclusive to African Americans, Du Bois’s application of the concept to the entire African American population has come into question.80
79 Thomas C. Holt, "The Political Uses of Alienation: W. E. B. Du Bois on Politics, Race, and Culture, 1903-1940," American Quarterly 42, no. 2 (1990): 305, https://www.jstor.org/stable/2713019
80 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
When Du Bois visits the South in Souls, he describes his interactions with African Americans who had nearly no contact with white Americans.81 It seems improbable that individuals who have had little interaction with white America are guided by the standards the dominant culture sets for them. Nevertheless, Du Bois’s notion of double consciousness implies such would be the case.82 The fruitless search for a solution brings into question the existence of a solution but also the idea of double consciousness all together. The persistence of double consciousness despite a compulsory education system and a great number of prominent Black individuals in positions of influence provide evidence for double consciousness as a systemic issue and for doubts about the existence of a solution.
However, if double consciousness exists, one aspect of Du Bois’s concept is apparent: the contradictions and conundrums within the solutions which Du Bois provides render them insufficient for solving the ailment afflicting Black Americans. So long as double consciousness persists, “full equality: equality grounded in reciprocal recognition” is unachievable.83 Thus, the search for a solution to double consciousness continues.
81 Du Bois, The Souls, 56.
82 Du Bois, 5.
83 Pittman, "Double Consciousness.”
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