The African American Feelings In America
When addressing how society works, sociologists must question the different roles each person plays and how that impacts social structure as a whole. WEB Du Bois delved into this issue by looking specifically into double consciousness and the experience of the black community living in the United States. Double consciousness, explained by WEB Du Bois, is the sense of duality black people feel in America when it comes to their identity. WEB Du Bois claims that black people look at themselves through the lens of another group’s perspective. They view and judge themselves based off of a white person’s perspective standards, and they also base they way the behave off of what the dominant class deems proper and good. WEB Du Bois also states that this differentiates black people from white people because black people have to experience living through their community and the dominant community’s eyes. This idea of social consciousness emphasizes the psychological toll the minorities have to pay due to the social structure as a whole.
Scholars throughout history and today all explore this idea of double consciousness, and the feelings and experiences of the “other”. In the book Double-Consciousness and the Rhetoric of Barack Obama: The Price and Promise of Citizenship, author Robert E. Terrill explores the effects social structure has on the feeling of dual identities within the black community, focusing on former President Barack Obama and his experiences leading a country where many would define him as a minority. Obama remembers that after reading Malcolm X he was overwhelmed with both hope and despair. Obama was moved by Malcolm’s “wish that the white blood ran through him”, and wondered about his own duality and identity coming from a white mother and a black father (Terrill 2015, 18). This explores the struggles and triumphs a black man feels in America. No matter how successful or driven Obama was, he consistently felt like he was trying to live up to the standards of the white man.
Lawrie Balfour also delved into the idea of double consciousness and the idea of “other” in her book The Evidence of Things Not Said: James Baldwin and the Promise of American Democracy. In the book, a boy named Baldwin is being called a “neger” and how it reminds him of the “painful ambivalence of his identity” and also “the discomfort his American identity engenders among white Americans” (Balfour 2001, 34). Balfour uses Baldwin to show another facet of double consciousness, which is the idea that someone of the minority class has double identities and see themselves through the dominant class’s eyes. At a young age, Baldwin is already aware of how other people see him, and his identity is based off of how it bothers the dominant class. Through this example, Balfour paints the doubleness of identity blacks in America feel when it comes to how they see themselves and their community, versus how other people see them and their community.
Double consciousness is further discussed and explored in a journal article that features an interview with Tsitsi Dangarembga, a Zimbabwean author and filmmaker. During this interview, Dangarembga talks about how she wrote a book of a Zimbabwean woman moving to Germany to show how someone can become labeled as “disposed” and “powerless” and must have to “internalize [it] to some extent in order to be able to cope with that system” (George and Scott 1993, 311). Dangarembga’s statements further explains that in order to accept and cope with their positions, black people must be able to embrace their duality and the social structure in some ways. She then describes the destruction this double consciousness could lead to because black people become “accustomed to these labels… so all [their] submissive characteristics come out when you are in a situation with your boss and then when you go home all the ‘power’ characteristics are intensified” (George and Scott 1993, 311). Dangarembga’s words lead to implications regarding how minorities can become actively submissive to the social structure that is oppressing them, and how that could lead them to behave submissive in certain settings but try to claim power in others.
Along with their roles in society, black people also base their definition of beauty off of the dominant class’s appearance. American beauty has always led people to visualize certain celebrities: Marilyn Monroe, Drew Barrymore, and many more white, blonde, blue-eyed women. This definition of beauty is based off of the dominant class in America, thus “much of the time, African American beauty standards were shaped within black society as much as they were formed in reaction to (let alone imposed by) the majority culture” (Walker 2007, 206). The idea of American beauty is embedded in black society from the time they are children. This can be seen through the children’s book series Dick and Jane. These books were especially popular in the 1950s for parents who wanted to introduce their children to reading. Dick and Jane was about two white children and their parents, and these books taught many children in the 1950s how to read. For black children, their first exposure to books were about the norm and joys of being in a middle class white family. This is just one example of how from a young age, black people are socialized to believe that another group is beautiful, and they must look like the dominant class in order to be beautiful and have value. This goes hand in hand with WEB Du Bois’ ideas when it comes to black people have to live and think about themselves in multiple ways.
When black people based their definitions of beauty off of the dominant class, they will begin to internally oppress themselves and feel inferior. Because black people are socialized to believe that you only hold value and are beautiful in America if you are white, they become to internalize these beliefs of American beauty and oppress themselves. This is evident in Toni Morrison’s book, The Bluest Eye, a fiction novel that is reflective upon American society and the tropes of living in America as a black woman. In the novel, a young girl thought that “if those eyes of hers were different, that is to say, beautiful, she herself would be different” (Morrison 1970, 86). The girl in the novel is not necessarily looking at herself through the eyes of herself, but the dominant class. This shows the duality of being a black woman where they have to look at their beauty through both the lenses of their community, along with their society as a whole. This shows the idea of social structure impacting a young child’s thoughts on beauty, and socializing her to not only believe that beauty correlates to her appearance, but also that they are ugly, and furthermore disposable to society.
Due to the developed internalized oppression and feeling of inferiority when it comes to beauty created by the social structure, black people begin to play the role of the inferior, which leads to the social structure becoming more impermeable. Black people, like Du Bois claimed, have to live their lives and behave based on what the dominant class in society thinks of them. This leads to black women believing they have to straighten or braid their hair, to hide the natural traits they have that they now have internalized as “ugly”. Once they start straightening or braiding their hair, they become to conform to their roles as the inferior, and this further builds to the social structure.
