4.5c W. E. B. Du Bois’ Double Consciousness
People who belong to marginalized groups must contend with contradictory messages about themselves from the subculture and the dominant culture to which they belong. W. E. B. Du Bois (2007) described this experience as double consciousness. Double consciousness is the sense of twoness that Black people in the United States experience due to living in both a Black subculture and the White dominant culture. Self-reflection depends on which culture the person is interacting with. Du Bois argued that “[t]he racially excluded have no choice but to see themselves through the eyes of the dominant subjects” (Itzigsohn & Brown, 2020, p. 43). In other words, Black peoples’ sense of self develops relative to how the dominant racial group (White people) views them.
Therefore, Black people (and people who belong to other marginalized groups) receive “fractured reflections” (Rawls & Duck, 2017). In Rawls and Duck’s study of high-status Black men working as vice presidents, corporate executives, and other salaried corporate positions, participants had difficulty getting others to reflect back the self they are projecting because of their race. Their participants recount being second-guessed or challenged by their subordinates, for example. However, the men refused to recognize the negative perceptions of themselves by others or withdrew from mutual interaction to keep a positive sense of self.
Beyond Rawls and Duck’s (2017) study, examples abound of high-status Black men being perceived as something they are not because of their race. For instance, in 2022, police handcuffed Ryan Coogler, the director of Black Panther who is Black, when he tried to withdraw money from a bank because the teller believed he was trying to rob the bank (Diaz & Levenson, 2022).
As Du Bois recognized, Black people receive different (and inaccurate) judgments from White people than they receive from other Black people. For people who belong to marginalized groups, their self develops in interaction with others who view them accurately and others who refuse to do so. A double consciousness develops as a result.
Photo 4.20
Black People in the United States Experience a Sense of Twoness
