![]() ![]() ![]() 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 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. 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. 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. 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. 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. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. 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. ![]() One 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. 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. With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The “shades of the prison-house” closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly watch the streak of blue above.Īfter 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 self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. Just how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law, by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that swam in my head, - some way. But they should not keep these prizes, I said some, all, I would wrest from them. Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade for the world I longed for, and all its dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine. That sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, - refused it peremptorily, with a glance. ![]() In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards-ten cents a package-and exchange. I was a little thing, away up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housatonic winds between Hoosac and Taghanic to the sea. I remember well when the shadow swept across me. It is in the early days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation first burst upon one, all in a day, as it were. Listen to the audio version of this article: Feature stories, read aloud: download the Audm app for your iPhone.Īnd yet, being a problem is a strange experience, - peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. ![]()
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