s
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 ever feels his two-ness,--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 history of the American Negro is the
history of this strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious 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 does not wish to
Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and
Africa; he does not wish to bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white
Americanism, for he believes--foolishly, perhaps, but fervently--that
Negro blood has yet 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 losing the opportunity of
self-development.

This is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of
culture, to escape both death and isolation, and to husband and use his
best powers. These powers, of body and of mind, have in the past been
so wasted and dispersed as to lose all effectiveness, and to seem like
absence of all power, like weakness. The double-aimed struggle of the
black artisan, on 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-stricken horde, could 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 lawyer or
doctor was pushed toward quackery and demagogism, and by the criticism
of the other world toward an elaborate preparation that overfitted him
for his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the
paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told 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-dancing, a-singing,
and a-laughing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black
artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race
which his larger audience despised, and he c