Source identified
Read & copy the quotation
“One ever feels his twoness,—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.”
- Source
- The Souls of Black Folk
- Date
- 1903
Meaning of “One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro;…”
Du Bois names the strain of double-consciousness: a self forced to negotiate both its own identity and the degrading external gaze of a racist society.
Where does it come from?
The Souls of Black Folk, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Project Gutenberg #408. The sentence follows Du Bois’s definition of double-consciousness and belongs to his analysis of Black American life under the color line.
