"After 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 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. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.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."
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Activists from the United StatesCivil rights activistsPhilosophers from the United StatesEconomists from the United StatesSociologists from the United States
Original Language: English
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Ch. I: Of Our Spiritual Strivings
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._E._B._Du_Bois
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W. E. B. Du Bois
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (23 February 1868 – 27 August 1963) was an American civil rights activist, sociologist, educator, historian, author, editor, and scholar.
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