W.E.B. Dubois and Me

W.E.B. Dubois and Me

W.E.B. DuBois was born in 1868, a hundred and nineteen years later Joe Susco was born. As a free man in the North, during the dawn of the twentieth century, DuBois was able to receive an extensive education. Born a free white man in the West, I am working in college to achieve that same goal.

Although separated by so many years, there are still glimpses of similarities between DuBois and I. Throughout our lives we have grown more and more cognizant of the politics, education, religion, and economics that shape the American system and separate the diverse cultures that live there. Although he was granted the fortune of education and freedom, he was never given the freedom of a white man. He was never able to go to a nice restaurant in the right part of town and order a meal. Or have a fair and impartial trial. Or just live without being hated. He was forever marked by his dark skin, like a big yellow star. As a child growing up, I never gave a second thought to all the privileges that I received. I have difficulty understanding what racism was like because I have never felt it. I am like a blind man who is told about color. Conceptually I understand it, but I have never experienced it. I will not disregard racism though, as if it did not exist. It is freighting to see how easily that can be done, because I am neither a victim nor a willing assailant.

Establishing an identity for DuBois was extremely complex, and in his piece, "The Souls of Black Folk", published in 1903, he developed the idea of double consciousness, a concept that has haunted the African American since the sixteenth century.

...the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with a second-sight in this American world,- a world which yields him no true self consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. 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.

I myself have had difficulty establishing my own identity. It has taken many years of exploration, reflection, and honesty for me to understand who I am, and I am still working at it. Dealing with the conflicts in my identity are excruciating, because how I identify myself is at the very core of who I am. Simple things like playing on my high school football team, and weekly meeting for dungeons and dragons leaves me in inner turmoil. DuBois had to draw a line between how others perceived him and his own self-perception. He also had to experience and grow inside and outside of the veil, the racialized boundary created by the dominant culture of the Europeans. This "double-consciousness" must have torn at his very soul. A person's sense of self is so fundamental not only to their self-esteem, but also to how they interpret the rest of the world. Yet there were times when he managed to amuse himself within the veil and make the most of the life he was born into. He managed to establish a medium between his veiled and unveiled worlds, for although he struggled in pursuit of fulfilled identity, he was able to achieve a successful life.

The concept of democracy during Dubois' era was horribly skewed towards African Americans. And it really relates to this concept of white nationalism, that no matter how poor you are, no matter what situation you're in, if you're white, then you are far better off than the wealthiest person of African descent. People operated on that racism and it affected every aspect of American life. It affected immigrants coming in, because immigrants,