Gregory Freeman: Do U.S. Blacks Feel A Duality? It's Complicated. P-D 3/2/1993

Headline: DO U.S. BLACKS FEEL A DUALITY? IT'S COMPLICATED
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Tues., Mar. 2, 1993
Section: WAR PAGE, Page: 1C, Edition: FIVE STAR

"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world - a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One even feels his twoness - 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."

"The Souls of Black Folk", W.E.B. DuBois

DOES THIS QUOTATION, written in 1903 and perhaps the most famous in all of African-American literature, hold true today? Do most blacks in America still feel a certain twoness about their existence? Can blacks be loyal both to America and to their own cultural heritage? Do blacks lose their cultural perspective if they strive for the "American dream?" How do African-Americans define their identity?

Gerald Early, director of African-American studies at Washington University, wondered about those questions.
He invited 20 black intellectuals, from leftist radical to neo-conservative and those in between, to reflect on their own experiences, using DuBois' words as a starting point.
Early's new book, "Lure and Loathing, " is a collection of those essays.

Early said he was surprised that despite the political perspectives of the writers, not one of them felt that America was a colorblind society. "I was also surprised by the despairing tone of even some of the conservatives, " he said. "No one seemed to be particularly optimistic."

Some who chose to write described personal experiences in which they had found themselves torn by their own duality.

An example is Glenn C. Loury, professor of economics at Boston University.
Loury describes growing up in the 1960s in Chicago with his friend, Woody. He writes that when his family moved into a neighborhood, there were a few white families, but that they slowly began moving away. All, that is, but Woody's family. He learned later that the family was actually black, that Woody had a black grandparent on each side of his family. His family had been "passing" - letting others think that they were white - and had decided to do that no longer.
The idea of "passing" was intriguing to Loury. "From the moment I learned of it I was at once intrigued and troubled by this idea of passing, " he wrote. "I enjoyed imagining my racial brethren surreptitiously infiltrating the citadels of white exclusivity. It allowed me to believe that, despite appearances and the white man's best efforts to the contrary, we blacks were nevertheless present, if unannounced, everywhere in American society. But I was disturbed by an evident implication of the practice of passing - that denial of one's genuine self is a necessary concomitant of a black person's making it in this society. What passing seemed to say about the world was that if one were both black and ambitious it was necessary to choose between racial authenticity and personal success."

Itabari Njeri, a Los Angeles Times contributing editor who specializes in the area of cultural diversity, describes the efforts of people of multiethnic backgrounds to be considered as just that - not as only black, white, Asian, Native American, Hispanic.
She writes about the experiences of several people of multiethnic backgrounds, some of whom have been fully accepted neither by blacks nor by whites. She describes the resentment that some of mixed backgrounds have of society's efforts to put them in a particular racial box.bp

The book includes gripping, thoughtful essays from such people as poet Nikki Giovanni; Yale law professor Stephen L. Carter; author and media activist Toni Cade Bambara; and Kenneth R. Manning, a professor of rhetoric and the history of science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Was there a clear answer to the questions that DuBois' quotation inspires?
Early says no. "Some thought the questions were no longer relevant, " he said. "Others thought that black people had more than a dual consciousness."

Not surprising. Black Americans, like anyone else, are a complicated lot. It is a rare moment indeed when there is unanimity.
I feel a sense a duality. Others do not.
It all boils down to individuality.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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