Double consciousness
Joke Kardux
Universiteit Leiden
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
“[T]he problem of the Twentieth
Century is the problem of
the color-line.”
W.E.B. Du Bois :
Double consciousness
“[T]he Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil,
and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a
world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but
only lets him see himself through the revelation of the
other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this doubleconsciousness, 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.”
W. E. B. Du Bois, Souls of Black Folk (1903)
Booker T. Washington (ca. 1856-1915)
Up From Slavery (1901)
From Booker T. Washington, Up From
Slavery (1901)
“To those of my race who … underestimate the
importance of cultivating friendly relations with the
Southern white man, who is their next-door neigbor, I
would say: ‘Cast down your bucket where you are ….
Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in
commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions.
… [I]t is in the South that the Negro is given a man’s
chance in the commercial world …. Our greatest danger
is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may
overlook the fact that the masses of us are to live by the
production of our hands. … It is at the bottom of life we
must begin, and not at the top.’”
Booker T. Washington:
accommodation to racial segregation
“In all things purely social we [i.e., whites
and blacks] can be as separate as the
fingers, yet one as the hand in all
things essential to mutual progress. …
The wisest among my race understand
that the agitation of questions of social
equality is the extremest folly ….”
Frederick Douglass (1818-95)
“If there is no struggle,
there is no progress. Those
who profess to favor
freedom, and yet depreciate
agitation, are men who want
crops without plowing up the
ground. They want rain
without thunder and
lightning. … Power
concedes nothing without
a demand.”
From “An Address on West India Emancipation” (1857)
“Society everywhere is in conspiracy
against the manhood of every one of
its members. … The virtue in most request
is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. …
Whoso would be a man
must be a nonconformist.”
(“Self-Reliance,” 1841)
Ralph Waldo Emerson
(1803-1882)
Civil Disobedience
“If [the injustice] is of such a nature
that it requires you to be the agent of
injustice to another, then, I say, break
the law. Let your life be a counter friction
to stop the machine.”
Henry David Thoreau
(1817-1862)
Thoreau in
Resistance to Civil Government
(1849)
In 1955 weigerde Rosa Parks
op te staan voor een witte
man in een bus in Montgomery,
Alabama.
De Montgomery Bus Boycott
die volgde gaf een enorme
impuls aan de strijd tegen
rassenscheiding en de zwarte
burgerrechtenbeweging
(1955-1965).
Martin Luther King (1929-1968)
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948)
1956: Opkomst van Martin Luther King als leider van de
Montgomery Bus Boycott, die een jaar duurde.
Dr. King, “Letter from Birmingham Jail”
(1963)
• “… there are two types of
laws: just and unjust. I
would be the first to
advocate obeying just
laws. One has not only a
legal but a moral
responsibility to obey just
laws. Conversely, one
has a moral responsibility
to disobey unjust laws. I
would agree with St.
Augustine that ‘an unjust
law is no law at all.’”
Martin Luther King
“I Have a Dream” (August 28, 1963)
“But one hundred years later [after the Emancipation
Proclamation of 1863], the Negro still is not free. One
hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly
crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains
of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro
lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast
ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later,
the Negro is still languished in the corners of American
society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so
we've come here today to dramatize a shameful
condition.”
Martin Luther King
“I Have a Dream” (August 28, 1963)
“In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a
check. When the architects of our republic wrote the
magnificent words of the Constitution and the
Declaration of Independence, they were signing a
promissory note to which every American was to fall
heir. This note was a promise that all men, … would be
guaranteed the ‘unalienable Rights’ of ‘Life, Liberty and
the pursuit of Happiness.’ It is obvious today that
America has defaulted on this promissory note,
insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of
honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the
Negro people a bad check, a check which has come
back marked ‘insufficient funds.’"
Barack Obama tijdens campagne in Selma, Alabama (2008):
“I’m here because somebody marched. … I’m here because you all
sacrificed for me. I stand on the shoulders of giants.”
President-elect Barack Obama per trein op weg naar
Washington DC voor zijn inauguratie in januari 2009