Americans as possessing what he calleda double consciousness, caught between a self-conception as an American and as aperson of African descent. As DuBois putit, “The Negro ever feels his two-ness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts,two unreconciled strivings . . . two warringideals in one dark body, whose doggedstrength alone keeps it from being tornasunder.”
As they so often do, DuBois’s teachingsapply as well to black Americans over a century later. In that vein, the double consciousnesshe referred to is often claimedto describe modern black Americans, butwith an implication that this is becauseof whites’ resistance to blacks’ true inclusionin the American fabric.
But analysts who make such claims resistacknowledging that race relations in America
have undergone seismic changes since1903. DuBois’s conception remains relevant,
but only in a reflex evolved from theone that he described.
Black America today is permeated by anew double consciousness. A tacit sense
reigns among a great many black Americanstoday that the “authentic” black personstresses personal initiative and strengthin private but dutifully takes on the mantleof victimhood in public.For many people, the private orientationtoward personal empowerment willsound unfamiliar—naturally, because mostof us experience black discourse only fromthe outside and hear a discourse in whichvictimhood is enshrined at all costs. Thusin the last presidential election, all but asliver of blacks voted for the presidentialcandidate committed to treating blacksas victims. When Harvard’s president,
Lawrence Summers, asked Cornel Westwhy he had not written an academic bookin 10 years, West called him “the Ariel
Sharon of higher education” and left theschool for Princeton, claiming that the Harvardestablishment was afraid that “theNegroes are taking over.” When MichaelJackson’s fading popularity depresses salesof his new recordings, he calls his producerracist. And so on.
But that is only one part of the true storyabout black Americans in our moment.
Many of these high-profile events are reallymore a kind of theatre than anything
else.
PolicyReport March/April 2003 Vol. XXV No. 2
In This Issue
John H. McWhorter is an associate professorof linguistics at the University of California,
Berkeley, a senior fellow at the ManhattanInstitute, and the author of severalbooks, including Authentically Black: Essaysfor the Black Silent Majority and The Powerof Babel: A Natural History of Language.
He delivered these remarks at a Cato seminarin New York City on November 15,
2002. Continued on page 14Double Consciousness in Black America
Rep. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Senator-elect John Sununu (R-N.H.) discuss the role of SocialSecurity in the 2002 election at a Cato Hill Briefing on December 4. Both stressed that theiradvocacy of private accounts had helped their campaigns. See page 8.Freedom in Hong Kong, p. 7留学生论文代写网代写留学生论文,英国硕士论文,澳洲论文,留学生论文代写网代写留学生论文,英国硕士论文,澳洲论文代写英语论文，包修改包通过！...留学essay代写，找人代写留学assignment，留学PS代写，代写留学research paper，留学dissertation代写