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W.E.B. Du Bois is an iconic name in American history. Sociologist, historian, social activist, and one of the founders of the NAACP, Du Bois' 'The Souls of Black Folk' remains an extraordinary collection of essays that outline the reality of race relations and the lives of Black communities throughout the early 20th century in the United States.

As one of the most influential works of his time and beyond, the book also outlines a key concept called "double-consciousness." This term refers to the challenge and discomfort that Black Americans face when straddling the identities of Black culture and the conformity necessary within a dominantly white society. This fascinating concept not only captures the reality of life for many marginalized people mere decades ago, but also provides insight into how power structures continue to require some groups to fold to the norms of a dominant group, and the implications of such.

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Du Bois was the first African American to earn a doctorate in the nation’s history. He was also one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).

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One of Du Bois’ most critical works, ‘The Souls of Black Folk,’ remains a key piece of literature in exploring and illuminating Black identity and struggles within a white-dominated society through a sociological perspective.

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In ‘The Souls of Black Folk,’ Du Bois outlines the struggle and inner conflict that Black people face when having to see themselves through the eyes and beliefs of white people.

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According to Du Bois, following the end of enslavement, the power dynamics of oppression took on a different form. Anti-Black sentiments seeped into the consciousness of African Americans and sought to deter true emancipation.

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The anti-Black sentiments held by African Americans about themselves resulted in a fragmented sense of identity: one in which they see themselves through their own community and culture, and also, through the contexts of racial prejudice.

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Du Bois presents this concept as a “veil.” In other words, an invisible structure of society that exists in one’s own mind in accordance with, in the case of African Americans, a racist logic.

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The veil that Du Bois speaks of fosters an invisible line between how Black people and the dominant white group are treated in society; the distinction in how they experience society.

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This double-consciousness, in which one sees oneself through the eyes of others, is a constant and unreconciled way of life.

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Du Bois believed that social change could not happen by appeasing oppressors or those already in a position of disproportionate power. Rather, he viewed agitation and protest as the key conditions that foster real, lasting, meaningful change.

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Therefore, to challenge double-consciousness, Du Bois argued that it would be through achievement tracks, for example, gaining prizes, degrees, prestige, and most importantly, education, that African Americans could gain greater clarity on what needs to be ‘fixed.’

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In fact, Du Bois argued that it was through these methods that African Americans would be able to excel in their respective fields to overcome the internalized aspects of white supremacy. Pictured is renowned gastroenterologist, Leonidas Harris Berry, who was the first Black doctor at the Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago.

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The undignified conceptualization of Black people from the perspective of those in racist structures only contributes toward the devaluation of one’s sense of self-worth.

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Du Bois highlights that African Americans are constantly aware of their two-ness; “two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.”

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This two-ness is a socio-cultural construct that comprises an extensive and persistent set of “disparate and competing thoughts, strivings, and ideals.”

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Only by overcoming double-consciousnesses can one attain an unbiased perception of oneself, merging two identities, “a Negro and an American,” together, without erasing either. Pictured is James Meredith, the first African American student admitted to the University of Mississippi.

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Du Bois’ emphasis on achievement and education in overcoming double-consciousness, or rather, attaining true consciousness, rests on the ability of Black people to use “their genius without inhibitions or exclusions.” Pictured are the first two African-American students, Vivian Malone and James Hood, at the University of Alabama.

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Du Bois points to the shame that Black people feel in having to overcome many hardships to seek education due to systemic inequalities, which he refers to as “systemic legal defilement.”

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This kind of confrontation in conjunction with daily prejudice, Du Bois argues, resulted in self-repression grounded in a constant state of self-disapproval.

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In a later writing, ‘Crisis,’ Du Bois points to how the state of double-consciousness also bleeds into a class dynamic. For example, he points to how his grandfather, who he describes as part of the “Negro upper crust.”

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He argues that this innate fear of being seen or associated “with poverty, ignorance and suppressed and disadvantaged people, dirty and with mad manners,” drove segregation among African American classes.

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Proposing a combination of “work, culture, and liberty,” Du Bois argues that the role of overcoming double-consciousness does not just rest on African Americans, but also in their counterparts. Pictured is a civil rights protest, in which white protestors painted an equal sign to symbolize the quest for racial equality.

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The concept has been so profound and expansive that it has made its way into many other fields outside of sociology, including philosophy and clinical psychology.

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The concept of double-consciousness is still referenced today in the ongoing struggles for racial equality in the United States.

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Stereotypes about African Americans, propagated by media and even politicians, reinforced through the socio-economic and political structures of the country, are still very prominent in today’s America.

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The systemically unequal treatment of Black people in the nation forces a confrontation of these narratives, which for some, could foster an aspect of self-disapproval under a racialized structure evolving from the period of Du Bois’ writings.

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But the concept of double-consciousness is not just limited to the American context. Scholar Paul Gilroy has said that the application of the Du Boisian concept presses against essentialist understandings of race. Pictured is a January 2015 protest in Portugal against xenophobic police activities.

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Gilroy argues that Du Bois challenges the idea that race is a fixed identity, even as an imposed category in the spectrum of white supremacy.

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Gilroy’s (right) expansion of double-consciousness in this way allows us to look at every context as its own; the racial structures that exist in the United States, no matter how similar in terms of a supremacist ideology, are not the same as those that exist in the United Kingdom, for example.

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The structures of racial supremacy and the categories of people organized in those structures are not fixed in place. Instead, they are part of dynamic systems that are constantly in movement and subject to change.

Sources: (Britannica) (Medium) (‘The Souls of Black Folks’) (American Literature) (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)

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He describes how his grandfather often refused to convene with poorer classes of African Americans because, he notes “the upper colored group is desperately afraid of being represented before American whites by this lower group, or being mistaken for them, or being treated as though they were part of it.”