In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B Du Bois implements various paradoxes, dichotomies, and dualities to draw attention to the religious hypocrisy of white people, to convey what it is like to be black in a racially hostile environment, and to express a desire to see black and white cohabitating peacefully. He employs these “twoness”-es (Du Bois 1705) as an effective rhetorical device that communicates his deeper meanings. Using this device, he discusses the separateness between races, the strain that black people must bear because of their inability to rise to full self-consciousness due to “contradictory aims” and “unreconciled ideals,”(1706) and the need to find the correct balance between ridding the nation of hurtful paradoxes that inhibit progress, accepting necessary dichotomies that promote healthy understanding between certain individuals and groups, and trading certain dualities for one self-concept, one political aim, or one great nation.
Du Bois’s fundamental argument is concerned with “twoness”: a nation divided by race and sociopolitical and economic aims after the Civil War needs to acknowledge that 9 million of its citizens are divided internally between “unreconciled ideals”—what is expected of them by whites, and what they in turn want for themselves, and also divided amongst themselves about how to go about fixing the “problem of the Twentieth Century… the problem of the color line” (1703). His rhetoric is scattered with “twos”: “two centuries… twice-told tale… second sight… second slavery” (1705-1713) so that the reader might be able to grasp how divided the black man is in his quest for personal identity, and how broken the nation is when so many Americans are experiencing this plight.
He began recognizing “twoness” as a boy. He says that being black is like being “shut out from (the white) world by a vast veil,” (1705) one that he asserts that he can at will “step within…” implying that he is both within and without the veil at different times. For him, living as a white person is being in the “other world,” and compares it to “the streak of blue above,” or heaven. Meanwhile, “the shades of the prison house closed round about us all,” “us” meaning black people. “We” are black; “they” are white. He describes feeling ambivalently in his youth towards whites; at times, he has a happy separation from them, saying that he “had no desire to tear down that veil” but with time, the “fine contempt began to fade; for the worlds (he) longed for were theirs, not (his)” (1705). Both his separateness and his feelings about it represent a “twoness,” one that he ascribes to all black men in the nation and one that needs to be addressed. Harris says:
“A theme of duality emerges throughout the book that begins with a reinterpretation and application of the biblical usage of veil. Within the Bible this word takes on two meanings. In one instance it refers to ignorance, blindness, and hard-heartedness that prevented the Jews from understanding the scriptures, the spiritual meaning of the law, and from seeing that Christ was the law for righteousness. In the second context, the veil of the temple was that which separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. Only the high priest could cross the separation on the Day of Atonement. The veil was stripped away only at crucifixion to indicate that all individuals could freely go to God. Du Bois applies both meanings to the racial differences in inequality and oppression suffered by African Americans at the hands of European Americans.”
Even his metaphors are conducive to his “twoness” motif. Another religious element he uses to garner support from white elites is that of the African-American jeremiad. In order to expose the religious hypocrisy (another “twoness”) of whites continuing to oppress their black brothers and sisters, Du Bois, like many of his contemporaries, relies heavily on religious dogma to support his stance. “To the architects of this rhetoric, the jeremiad served a threefold purpose: (1) to expose paradoxical white Christian ideologies, (2) to emphasize the inhumanity of whites’ treatment of Blacks, and (3) to develop a sociopolitical awareness among Blacks. A more in depth investigation of African-American social protest of the early republic suggests that the prototypical form of their rhetoric is not so much religious as it is political” (Harrell). Du Bois says that “this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals” in the heart of every black man has “sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation” (1706). His purpose here is exactly as Harrell suggests: he wants to show how white people are at fault for the under-development of the black race, to make them feel repentance for it, and to give black people the hope that there will be a brighter future for them than their present situation might allow them to feel.
Yes, because of his oppression, a black man “ever 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”(1705). He assigns this “double -consciousness” as the reason for black people being thought of as inferior, because the black man has only “half a heart for either cause” (1706) in his struggle to interact with the white world and still maintain his own sense of self-worth. He gives several examples of these “double aims” (1706). A black artisan might try to please white people by going into a profession that is considered more respectable, but he would be torn because of the definite need by his “poverty-stricken horde” (1706) to “plough and nail and dig” (1706). A black doctor might “be tempted toward quackery” (1706) or made to “feel ashamed of his lowly tasks” (1706) by white people. A scholar might be discouraged because he realizes how much his people need to learn, but be afraid to learn from white people, because “the knowledge that would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood” (1706). The black artist may feel uncertain about how beautiful or harmonious his work is because “the beauty revealed to him (is) the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despise” (1706). This is the reason, he insinuates, that black men are considered to be “half-men” (1709); they are only “half-free”(1707). When there are “twoness”-es like these, there is the “sound of conflict” (1709) and they need to be eliminated if there is ever going to be a resolution to the “half-named Negro problem” (1708).
Du Bois also calls attention to many paradoxes that black men must encounter. “Paradoxes are more than abstractions of thought which convey a seeming incongruity between two ideas or phenomena. Paradoxes provide new areas where one can collect new data or else emphasize the need for new ways to explain a novel phenomenon. Also, to label something as a paradox has an interrogatory effect: it can call into question views and relationships taken for granted. Du Bois employed the term both as a justification for further social analysis and as a rhetorical device to persuade the (white) readers” (Williams). The first paradox is prejudice, and here he catalogs a list of “twoness”-es: “the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the ‘higher’ against the ‘lower’ races”(1708). Yet were black men “not…asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all (their) time and thought to (their) own social problems,”(1708) they might be able to prove that they have been oppressed for centuries, and this is the cause of their seeming inferiority.
He criticizes Booker T. Washington freely, who suggests that “It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top” (1623). He then outlines “the triple paradox of (Mr. Washington’s) career” (1715) discussing how Washington insists on the right ideals, but paradoxically inhibits their fruition through the methods he endorses. Part of fully accepting Du Bois’s ideas in their entirety is rejecting Washington’s “attitude of conciliation.” In fact, he says, there are two classes of colored Americans (yet another “twoness”) for whom this triple paradox of Washington’s is the object of criticism. One “represents the attitude of revolt and revenge,” (1716) which he dismisses as too primitive too be effective, and the other is the class of black men with whom Du Bois affiliates himself. All of these paradoxes or “twoness”-es, even “inspiration striving with doubt, and faith with vain questionings” must be grappled with by every black man, and should no longer exist if true equality is to be attained.
Yet not all “twoness”-es are hurtful. Some dichotomies are necessary in order for black men to rise to “full self-consciousness” (1708), and in order for the two races to stay “separate as the fingers of a hand,” a metaphor first used by Washington to describe his social aim for the black race. “Although DuBois opposed Booker T. Washington’s call for “separation” in “all things purely social,”… he doesn’t eliminate the color line so much as displace it, transporting it from a social context to a literary one, making sounds—and, by extension, the people whose sounds they are—seem “as separate as the fingers” of a hand” (Kerkering). Although Du Bois criticizes Washington freely, he also admits that he has “sincerity of purpose” (Du Bois 1712) and “tact and power” (1712). He says that Washington has performed “an invaluable service in counseling patience and courtesy” (1716) and is generally to be praised in many ways. However, he cannot overlook that “there is among educated and thoughtful colored men in all parts of the land a feeling of deep regret, sorrow, and apprehension at the wide currency and ascendancy which some of Mr. Washington’s theories have gained” (1712). Any “educated, thoughtful colored man” should therefore reject some of Washington’s theories, but also honor his sincerity and honesty, along with his triumphs for his race. This reception of Washington’s proposals as “the social student’s inspiration and despair” (1712) reveals an acceptable dichotomy because it takes into account the complexity of the issue, and qualifies how ambivalence is necessary sometimes.
Black men should be able to be “both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows” (1706). Black men should not have to choose between “bleaching his Negro soul” and “Africanizing America” (1706). This “twoness” should be advocated as necessary for every black man’s identity. A black man must also “be himself and not another,” (1708) so whites should allow black people to co-exist peacefully. In order to illustrate this “twoness” Du Bois uses words like “co-worker” and “husband” to describe the “end of (the black man’s) striving” (1706). And the North should accept that it is the South’s “co-partner in guilt” (1719) for having created the atmosphere of oppression and bondage. All of these “twoness”-es are necessary and healthy both to the psyche of black men and the psyche of the nation.
There are some “oneness”-es that Du Bois says are just as hurtful as some “twoness”-es. In his criticism of Washington, he says that Washington has “”singleness of vision,” a “thorough oneness with his age,” and is “unnecessarily narrow” (1711). In one short paragraph, he emphasizes Washington’s oneness by using “single” or “one” seven times. He condemns this oneness because it is lacking; it is a “dangerous half truth” (1709). Washington is seen as a “compromiser” (1715) and this “oneness” is unacceptable to Du Bois. Another oneness that Du Bois condemns is the worship of freedom by the slaves in the days of bondage. They awaited “one divine event” with “one refrain- Liberty,” and thought that with their emancipation all of their prayers would be answered “in one wild carnival of blood and passion.” He dismisses these “oneness”-es as a result of the simple ignorance of a lowly people” (1707) and a gross oversimplification of what it would take to truly be free. After all, he says, “the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land” (1707).
Yet, along with the necessary dichotomies that Du Bois mentions, perhaps the most important aspect of his argument is that “each (bright ideal of the past) alone (is) over-simple and incomplete” (1709). He says that “to be really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded into one” (1709). We must trade some of these dualities for a unity of vision and a single purpose. The veil must be lifted, the “us” must be conjoined with the “them,” and the worlds of the “streak of blue above” and the “prison house” must blend together. In the same way, each black man must rise to a full self-consciousness of himself as one man who belongs to numerous groups. Harris points out in the title:
“Du Bois uses the definite article before the word souls and thus makes “The Souls” convey a black essence, the intrinsic or indispensable properties that characterize or identify something, meaning the most important ingredient, the crucial element, or the oneness, that is characteristic of psychological study. However, he uses the plural, souls, to alert the reader to the “group” or collective of members. Moreover, his use of the word soul directs the reader to the inner, internal, and subjective as contrasted with the outer, external, and objective, regardless of whether he is referring to the individual or group. The intricacy of the reciprocal and bidirectional relationship between the inner world of the African American individual and the culture of the historically subjugated and oppressed group is brought to awareness through multiple and interwoven meanings.”
There is a coming together in Du Bois’s rhetoric of individual and group, of inner and outer, of history and culture, and of “oneness”-es and “Two-ness”-es.
This is a unity and a “oneness” that is not lacking, that is not oversimplified or a “dangerous half-truth.” Similarly, all men must strive for a social unity and a coming-together “in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day on American soil, two world-races may give each to each other those characteristics both so sadly lack”(1709). The “burden belongs to the nation” (1719) as a whole. Like Douglass, whom Du Bois praises as “the greatest of American Negro leaders,” (1714) his main aim for his race is “ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on no other terms” (1714). In other words, to be really “two,” all these ideas must be melted and welded into a “oneness”: one nation, the “common Fatherland” (1709), with one aim when it comes to “the Negro problem,” which is to live peacefully and equably together.
Works Cited
Dubois, W.E.B. “From The Souls of Black Folk.” The Norton Anthology of American Literature
Shorter Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, Inc.,
2003. 1702-1719. Print.
Harrell, Willie J. “A Call to Consciousness and Action: Mapping the African-American
Jeremiad”. Canadian Review of American Studies 36.2 (2006): 149-180. Project
Muse. Web. 10 July 2010.
Harris, Shanette M. “Constructing a Psychological Perspective: The Observer and the Observed
in The Souls of Black Folk.” The Souls of Black Folk: One Hundred Years Later. Ed.
Dolan Hubbard. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2003. 218-250. Rpt. In
Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism. Ed. Thomas J. Schoenberg and Lawrence J.
Trudeau. Vol. 169. Detroit: Gale, 2006. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 July 2010.
Kerkering, Jack. “’Of Me and Mine’: The Music of Racial Identity in Whitman and Lanier,
Dvorak and DuBois.” American Literature 73.1 (2001): 147-184. Project Muse. Web. 10
July 2010.
Washington, Booker T. “From Up From Slavery”. The Norton Anthology of American
Literature. Shorter Sixth Edition. Ed. Nina Baym. New York: W.W. Norton and
Company, Inc., 2003. 1621-1630. Print.
Williams, Robert W. “Paradoxes of the South in Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk.” The
Mississippi Quarterly 62.1-2 (2009): 71+. Literature Resource Center. Web. 10 July
2010.
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