W.E.B. DuBois

This morning we referenced DuBois and his ideology about an African-American sense of "twoness" because of an effort to look at oneself from not only an internal perspective, but an external one as well. After reading that quote from "The Souls of Black Folk," I actually came into contact with a chapter from the book as required reading for another class. The chapter entitled "Of the Coming of John" describes a young man who is sent off to college from a small segregated town in Southern Georgia. All of the men in town seem to like John, but find that college will somehow "spoil him." After spending his time in college, he finally returns to his hometown and is disrespected because of his college education. This is evident in his plight to create an African-American School for the young, and he is denied by the white judge on the basis that African- American's should be subordinate now and forever in their Southern community. For me, the inability for others in John's community to become educated goes back to DuBois' point about "double consciousness," without the ability to gain education African-American's in John's and other communities will never be able to see the their own true consciousness, without putting themselves in the shoes of a white person.