When I was writing the midterm papers, I noticed a trend closely related to Du Bois’s double consciousness that marked both Du Bois’s studies and dynamics of the black middle class today. We have touched upon double consciousness a number of times in lecture, and the part that stood out most to me of Du Bois’s discussion of the concept was his remark that blacks are pushed to “[measure their] soul[s] by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.\u201d In other words, blacks must measure their actions by white standards, which are deeply connected to racism and oppression.<\/p>\n
It seems to me that Du Bois inadvertently exhibits signs of double consciousness himself when he urges the black community to reach “the best type of modern European culture” (The Talented Tenth, 3). He is measuring blacks’ way of life by the standard of white culture, clearly buying into some aspects of white hegemony. This stood out to me as a way in which Du Bois was not fully able to move beyond\u00a0the dominance of white norms and culture \u00a0– in doing so, he exhibits his own concept of double consciousness.<\/p>\n
I also kept coming back to double consciousness when reading contemporary studies of the black middle class. The balance between “whiteness” and “blackness” that Lacy, Pattillo and Frazier highlighted in their studies pointed out to me that in order to reach conventional middle class status, one must, to some degree, adhere to some level of ‘whiteness.’ Either they adopt behaviors that are associated<\/em> with whites due to the fact that they had been historically unavailable to blacks (ie. middle class jobs, home ownership) or adopt behaviors that are arbitrarily associated with the middle class and were established<\/em> by dominant white culture (i.e. speaking Standard English at work and school). I spoke a bit about this observation of mine in past response papers and blog posts. It seems natural to me that in adopting these behaviors linked to ‘whiteness,’ one experiences some degree of separation (intentional or not) from ‘blackness’ due to the fact that our society has historically separated the two races. I saw this as connected to double consciousness because Du Bois’s concept highlights the identity crisis that comes with having to both measure oneself by white standards – as the black middle class does almost by necessity of their class status – while being simultaneously oppressed by them – as is evident in Pattillo’s description of social and economic differences between the white and black middle class. Members of the black middle class seem to still experience this dilemma today.<\/p>\n The fact that both Du Bois and modern-day members of the black middle class experience double consciousness indicates that despite numerous markers of progress in black status and life chances, society is still structured in oppressive way that privileges white standards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I was writing the midterm papers, I noticed a trend closely related to Du Bois’s double consciousness that marked both Du Bois’s studies and dynamics of the black middle class today. We have touched upon double consciousness a number of times in lecture, and the part that stood out most to me of Du … Continue reading Double Consciousness in Du Bois’s Time and Today<\/span>