Becoming Black: Using W.E.B. DuBois' Concept of Double Consciousness to Explore the Lives and Wo
In his work The Souls of Black Folks, W.E.B. DuBois explores what he considers the greatest problem of the 20th century: “the problem of the colorline” as it affects the African American experience within the context of the United States (vii). He goes on to introduce his famous concept of “double consciousness” which describes a psychological phenomenon in which the self is fragmented as a result of the individual having more than one social identity. DuBois’ revolutionary theorizations on race in The Souls of Black Folks helped artists, theorists, and activists of his time to make sense of the black American experience within the greater context of American society, culture, and history, and it remains a classic text within the cannon of sociological writings to the present. As a passionate supporter of black art, W.E.B. DuBois corresponded with many of the Harlem Renaissance’s most talented and influential artist, offering his advice, criticism, and support. One such artist was Zora Neale Hurston who corresponded with DuBois throughout her career. W.E.B. DuBois’ and Zora Neale Hurston’s descriptions of their moments of becoming black as well as their exploration the implications of double consciousness in The Souls of Black Folks and “How It Feels to Be Colored Me” help to understand the significance of similar themes which are explored in Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God.
In Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God, Janie Crawford beautifully shares the story of her life with her best friend Phoebe as they sit together on Janie's front porch. Like DuBois and Hurston, Janie remembers the moment she became black during an incident in which she and the white children she played with during her childhood were looking at a picture of themselves. Janie tells Phoebe, “[W]hen we looked at de picture and everybody got pointed out there wasn’t no body left except a real dark little girl with long hair standing by Eleanor. Dat’s where Ah wuz s’posed to be, but Ah couldn’t recognize dat dark chile as me. So Ah ast, ‘where is me? Ah don’t see me,’” (Their Eyes Were Watching God 9). After the white children and their parents laugh to themselves, amused by Janie’s lack of self-awareness, the children’s mother, Miss Nellie, says, “Dat’s you, Alphabet, don’t you know yo’ ownself?”(Their Eyes… 9). This scene is significant within the context of DuBois’ conception of racial identity and Hurston’s own experiences for several reasons that will explain in depth.
In an instance that is similar to Janie’s experience, DuBois remembers a moment when he was a young boy and white girl refused to accept his visiting card. DuBois writes, “I remember well when the shadow swept across me…[I]t dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a by a vast veil” (The Souls of Black Folks 2-3). For Janie and DuBois, becoming black is a moment filled with confusion and public humiliation at the hands of white playmates who were once assumed to be friends and equals. Similar to what DuBois writes about his own experience, Janie says, “[B]efore Ah seen de picture Ah thought Ah wuz like de rest” (Their Eyes… 9). In their moments of becoming black, both Janie and DuBois understood for the first times in their young lives that white society viewed them as different, as someone whose otherness would be a lifelong source of ridicule and psychic attack.
Though Hurston’s early childhood experiences are different from Janie (and DuBois) in that she grew up in an entirely black community (which is the reason her moment of becoming black happens as a young teenager and not as a child), she writes of her experience:
I remember the very day I became colored…[C]hanges came in the family when I was thirteen, and I was sent to school in Jacksonville. I left Eatonville, the town of the oleanders, a Zora. When I disembarked from the riverboat at Jacksonville, she was no more. It seemed that I had suffered a sea change. I was not Zora of Orange County any more, I was now a little colored girl. I found it out in certain ways. In my heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast brown warranted not to rub nor run. (“How It Feels to Be Colored Me”)
Though Hurston is not as explicit in her analysis of her moment of becoming black as Janie and DuBois, the experience was so deeply scarring that she feels that she lost part of her identity on “the day [she] became colored” (“How It Feels…”). Both Hurston and Janie describe how their newfound understanding of how the world viewed them as black girls changed their perception of their physical reality when looking at themselves—for the first time in her life, Janie sees herself as “the dark chile” the white world has always seen her as and Hurston knows “in her heart as well as in the mirror” that she is “a little colored girl” (Their Eyes… 9; “How It Feels…”) Hurston explains that she feels most black “when [she] is thrown up against a sharp white background” (“How It Feels…”)[1] Janie only becomes black when she sees herself in contrast against her white playmates, and this is when she becomes aware of her own double consciousness. In each of these retellings, Janie, DuBois, and Hurston suggest they are struck by a powerful psychological force which leaves lasting marks on their fundamental sense of self and how they view themselves within the racist society of the United States. The moment of becoming black is such a powerful force in the formation of each of their identities that each feels s/he must include some mention of their moment of becoming black in order to better make sense of the stories of themselves and their identities.
On the subject of double consciousness, DuBois writes:
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 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. (The Souls… 3)
As DuBois explains, the psychological effect of having an additional identity thrust upon a human person is having difficulty in maintaining a cohesive, unified self. For each of these individuals, their moment of becoming black is the beginning of carrying a lifelong burden of maintaining multiple identities within the confines of one person.[2] The implications of Janie’s multiple consciouses are masterfully demonstrated, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. points out, in the use of dual voices in the narrative. In the afterward of Their Eyes Were Watching God, Henry Louis Gates, Jr. writes:
The representation of her sources of language seems to be her principle concern, as she constantly shifts back and forth between her ‘literate’ narrator’s voice and highly idiomatic black voice found in wonderful passages of free indirect discourse. Hurston moves in and out of these distinct voices effortlessly, seamlessly, just as she does in Their Eyes to chart Janie’s coming to consciousness. It is this usage of a divided voice, a double voice unreconciled, that strikes me as her great achievement, a verbal analogue of her double experience as a woman in a male-dominated world and as a black person in a nonblack world, a woman’s writer’s revision of W.E.B. DuBois metaphor of ‘double-consciousness’ for the hyphenated African-American. (203)
Janie’s struggle in forming a unified self goes back further in her development than her moment of becoming black. This is demonstrated in Their Eyes Were Watching God by Janie being called “Alphabet” as a child. Janie tells Phoebe, “Dey all useter call me Alphabet ‘cause so many people had done named me different names” (Their Eyes… 9). This is significant because names are representative of how our community recognizes our identity. Because Janie’s community (who are all aware of her blackness from the moment she is born, though she is not) collectively refuse to recognize her selfhood by projecting their own names/identities upon her, Janie has difficulty in forming a unified self and this struggle continues into her adulthood. Janie only becomes a unified, cohesive self when she is recognized by her friend Phoebe who affirms the truth, perspective, beauty, and value of Janie and her story.
W.E.B. DuBois’ conception of race and double consciousness as well as his and Zora Neale Hurston’s personal accounts of what it is like to become black and to be black in the United States are helpful in understanding the significance and lifelong implications of Janie’s moment of becoming black in Their Eyes Were Watching God. Though DuBois and Hurston both struggled with the effects of how the white world viewed their personhood, both DuBois and Hurston courageously and gorgeously affirm the beauty of black art, culture, and personhood in their work. Janie’s voices, though fractured, are a beautiful answer to DuBois call: “Who shall let this world be beautiful? Who shall restore to men the glory of sunsets and the peace of quiet sleep?” (“Criteria for Negro Art”).
[1] Because of her positive experience of growing up in an all-black community in Eatonville, Florida as a child and her understanding of the practical difficulties of racial reconciliation, Hurston was an advocate of racial separatism.
[2] Janie and Hurston’s conception of their selfhood is all the more complicated by the fact that they are not only black in a racist society but that they are women in a sexist society. Works Cited DuBois, W.E.B. Criteria of Negro Art. N.p.: n.p., 1926. Print.DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folks. N.p.: n.p., 1903. Print. Gate, Jr., Henry L. Afterword. Their Eyes Were Watching God. Ed. Zora N. Hurston. New York: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1937. 195-205. Print. Hurston, Zora N. "How It Feels to Be Colored Me." American Studies at the University of Virginia. University of Virginia, 1928. Web. 6 Mar. 2015. Hurston, Zora N. Their Eyes Were Watching God. New York City: Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 1937. Print.