Title:
A coon alphabet,
URL:
http://ufdc.ufl.edu//UF00085041/00001
Site:
University of Florida Digital Collections
"The Veil" and "Double Consciousness"
In The Souls of Black Folk, arguably W.E.B. DuBois’ most famous work, he introduces and addresses two
concepts that describe the quintessential Black experience in America— the concepts of “the veil” and “doubleconsciousness.” Though DuBois uses these terms separately, their meanings and usage in his works are deeply
intertwined. These two concepts gave a name to what so many African-Americans felt but previously could not
express due to a lack of words to accurately describe their pain. The implication and connotation of these words
were far-reaching because not only did it succinctly describe the plight of being Black and American then, it
rings true to the core and essence of what it means to still be Black and American today.
For DuBois, the veil concept primarily refers to three things. First, the veil suggests to the literal darker
skin of Blacks, which is a physical demarcation of difference from whiteness. Secondly, the veil suggests white
people’s lack of clarity to see Blacks as “true” Americans. And lastly, the veil refers to Blacks’ lack of clarity to
see themselves outside of what white America describes and prescribes for them.
Any socially-aware, present-day African-American has had at least two life-altering experiences in life—
the moment he/she realized he/she was Black, and the moment when he/she realized that was a problem. Like
DuBois, many African-Americans can pinpoint the exact instance at which both of these life altering encounters
took place, and they too came to this realization at a young age. For DuBois, these realizations came during a
youthful ball, at which his card was “peremptorily” refused by a Southern, white girl simply (or rather, not so
simply) because he was Black. Of this encounter he writes the following:
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddeness that I was different from the others; or like [them perhaps]
in heart and
life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil,
to creep
through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great
wandering shadows.
In this passage, DuBois’ initial reaction upon realizing that being Black was a “problem” in American
society is interesting because this same sentiment is commonly felt by African-Americans today. In addition,
DuBois’ reactionary feeling of contempt for all white people on the other side of the veil reveals a larger point
about the veil concept. Because many people only understand DuBois’ veil concept to mean that white people’s
view of Black people is obstructed by this not-so-invisible veil that hangs between the races, many forget to see
that this lack of vision is two-fold; that is, just as the white girl looking through the veil could not properly see
DuBois for who he was beyond his skin, he in turn could not clearly see the whole white race because of his one
negative encounter with her as well, which he then projected onto the entire white race.
Although there is a veil that shades the view of both Blacks and Whites, the reason why Blacks traditionally
have a better understanding of whites than the reverse is because of this “two-ness” lived and felt by Black
Americans. In other words, upon coming to the realization of being Black and what that has historically meant
in America (or arguably presently means in America), Black people have long known how to operate in two
Americas— one that is white and one that is Black. DuBois describes this phenomena as “doubleconsciousness”, which is the awareness of the “two-ness” of being “an American and a[n African-American]”,
and the largely unconscious, almost instinctive movement between the these two identities, as needed.
DuBois describes African-Americans as “a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with secondsight 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.” Further, of the actual concept of “double-consciousness”,
DuBois goes on to say the following:
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.
This passage is perhaps the most powerfully written, (and amazingly accurate for some) of the sheer burden
of being Black and American in this society. Although written over a century ago, for many modern-day
African-Americans this passage is a reflection of how very little has changed in America’s conceptualization of
what is “Black” and of what is “American”. But more importantly, for African-Americans it is an illustration
and reminder of how far they still have to go.
THE ETHICS OF LIVING JIM CROW
An Autobiographical Sketch
Richard Wright, Chicago
....
There is but one place where a black boy who knows no trade can get a job.
And that's where the houses and faces are white, where the trees, lawns, and hedges
are green. My first job was with an optical company in Jackson, Mississippi. The
morning I applied I stood straight and neat before the boss, answering all his
questions with sharp yessirs and nosirs. I was very careful to pronounce my sirs
distinctly, in order that he might know that I was polite, that I knew where I was,
and that I knew he was a white man. I wanted that job badly.
He looked me over as though he were examining a prize poodle. He questioned
me closely about my schooling, being particularly insistent about how much
mathematics I had had. He seemed very pleased when I told him I had had two
years of algebra.
"Boy, how would you like to try to learn something around here?" he asked
me.
"I'd like it fine, sir," I said, happy. I had visions of "working my way up." Even
Negroes have those visions.
"All right," he said. "Come on."
I followed him to the small factory.
"Pease," he said to a white man of about thirty-five, "this is Richard. He's
going to work for us."
Pease looked at me and nodded.
I was then taken to a white boy of about seventeen.
"Morrie, this is Richard, who's going to work for us."
"Whut yuh sayin' there, boy!" Morrie boomed at me.
"Fine!" I answered.
The boss instructed these two to help me, teach me, give me jobs to do, and let
me learn what I could in my spare time.
My wages were five dollars a week.
I worked hard, trying to please. For the first month I got along O.K. Both
Pease and Morrie seemed to like me. But one thing was missing. And I kept
thinking about it. I was not learning anything, and nobody was volunteering to help
me. Thinking they had forgotten that I was to learn something about the mechanics
of grinding lenses, I asked Morrie one day to tell me about the work. He grew red.
"Whut yuh tryin' t' do, nigger, git smart?" he asked.
"Naw; I ain' tryin' t' -it smart," I said.
"Well, don't, if yuh know whut's good for yuh!"
I was puzzled. Maybe he just doesn't want to help me, I thought. I went to
Pease.
"Say, are you crazy, you black bastard?" Pease asked me, his gray eyes
growing hard.
I spoke out, reminding him that the boss had said I was to be given a chance to
learn something.
"Nigger, you think you're white, don't you?"
"Naw, sir!"
"Well, you're acting mighty like it!"
"But, Mr. Pease, the boss said . . ."
Pease shook his fist in my face.
"This is a white man's work around here, and you better watch yourself!"
From then on they changed toward me. They said good-morning no more.
When I was just a bit slow in performing some duty, I was called a lazy black sonof-a-bitch.
Once I thought of reporting all this to the boss. But the mere idea of what
would happen to me if Pease and Morrie should learn that I had "snitched" stopped
me. And after all, the boss was a white man, too. What was the use?
The climax came at noon one summer day. Pease called me to his work-bench.
To get to him I had to go between two narrow benches and stand with my back
against a wall.
"Yes, sir," I said.
"Richard, I want to ask you something," Pease began pleasantly, not looking
up from his work.
"Yes, sir," I said again.
Morrie came over, blocking the narrow passage between the benches. He
folded his arms, staring at me solemnly.
I looked from one to the other, sensing that something was coming.
"Yes, sir," I said for the third time.
Pease looked up and spoke very slowly.
"Richard, Mr. Morrie here tells me you called me Pease."
I stiffened. A void seemed to open up in me. I knew this was the show-down.
He meant that I had failed to call him Mr. Pease. I looked at Morrie. He was
gripping a steel bar in his hands. I opened my mouth to speak, to protest, to assure
Pease that I had never called him simply Pease, and that I had never had any
intentions of doing so, when Morrie grabbed me by the collar, ramming my head
against the wall.
"Now, be careful, nigger!" snarled Morrie, baring his teeth. "1 heard yuh call
'im Pease! 'N' if yuh say yuh didn't, yuh're callin' me a lie, see?" He waved the steel
bar threateningly.
If I had said: No, sir, Mr. Pease, I never called you Pease, I would have been
automatically calling Morrie a liar. And if I had said: Yes, sir, Mr. Pease, I called
you Pease, I would have been pleading guilty to having uttered the worst insult that
a Negro can utter to a southern white man. I stood hesitating, trying to frame a
neutral reply.
"Richard, I asked you a question!" said Pease. Anger was creeping into his
voice.
"I don't remember calling you Pease, Mr. Pease," I said cautiously. "And if I
did, I sure didn't mean . . ."
"You black son-of-a-bitch! You called me Pease, then!" he spat, slapping me
till I bent sideways over a bench. Morrie was on top of me, demanding:
"Didn't yuh call 'im Pease? If yuh say yuh didn't, I'll rip yo' gut string loose
with this f--kin' bar, yuh black granny dodger! Yuh can't call a white man a lie 'n' git
erway with it, you black son-of-a-bitch!"
I wilted. I begged them not to bother me. I knew what they wanted. They
wanted me to leave.
"I'll leave," I promised. "I'll leave right now."
They gave me a minute to get out of the factory. I was warned not to show up
again, or tell the boss.
I went.
When I told the folks at home what had happened, they called me a fool. They
told me that I must never again attempt to exceed my boundaries. When you are
working for white folks, they said, you got to "stay in your place" if you want to
keep working.
2
My Jim Crow education continued on my next job, which was portering in a
clothing store. One morning, while polishing brass out front, the boss and his
twenty-year-old son got out of their car and half dragged and half kicked a Negro
woman into the store. A policeman standing at the corner looked on, twirling his
nightstick. I watched out of the corner of my eye, never slackening the strokes of
my chamois upon the brass. After a few minutes, I heard shrill screams coming
from the rear of the store. Later the woman stumbled out, bleeding, crying, and
holding her stomach. When she reached the end of the block, the policeman
grabbed her and accused her of being drunk. Silently I watched him throw her into
a patrol wagon.
When I went to the rear of the store, the boss and his son were washing their
hands at the sink. They were chuckling. The floor was bloody, and strewn with
wisps of hair and clothing. No doubt I must have appeared pretty shocked, for the
boss slapped me reassuringly on the back.
"Boy, that's what we do to niggers when they don't want to pay their bills," he
said, laughing.
His son looked at me and grinned.
"Here, hava cigarette," he said.
Not knowing what to do, I took it. He lit his and held the match for me. This
was a gesture of kindness, indicating that even if they had beaten the poor old
woman, they would not beat rif I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
"Yes, sir," I said, and asked no questions.
After they had gone, I sat on the edge of a packing box and stared at the
bloody floor till the cigarette went out.
That day at noon, while eating in a hamburger joint, I told my fellow Negro
porters what had happened. No one seemed surprised. One fellow, after swallowing
a huge bite, turned to me and asked
"Huh. Is tha' all they did t' her?"
"Yeah. Wasn't tha' enough?" I asked.
"Shucks! Man, she's a lucky bitch!" he said, burying his lips deep into a juicy
hamburger. "Hell, it's a wonder they didn't lay her when they got through."
3
I was learning fast, but not quite fast enough. One day, while I was delivering
packages in the suburbs, my bicycle tire was punctured. I walked along the hot,
dusty road, sweating and leading my bicycle by the handle-bars.
A car slowed at my side.
"What's the matter, boy?" a white man called.
I told him my bicycle was broken and I was walking back to town.
"That's too bad," he said. "Hop on the running board."
He stopped the car. I clutched hard at my bicycle with one hand and clung to
the side of the car with the other.
"All set?"
"Yes, sir," I answered. The car started.
It was full of young white men. They were drinking. I watched the flask pass
from mouth to mouth.
"Wanna drink, boy?" one asked.
I laughed, the wind whipping my face. Instinctively obeying the freshly
planted precepts of my mother, I said:
"Oh, no!"
The words were hardly out of my mouth before I felt something hard and cold
smash me between the eyes. It was an empty whisky bottle. I saw stars, and fell
backwards from the speeding car into the dust of the road, my feet becoming
entangled in the steel spokes of my bicycle. The white men piled out, and stood
over me.
"Nigger, ain' yuh learned no better sense'n tha' yet?" asked the man who hit
me. "Ain' yuh learned t' say sir t' a white man yet?"
Dazed, I pulled to my feet. My elbows and legs were bleeding. Fists doubled,
the white man advanced, kicking my bicycle out of the way.
"Aw, leave the bastard alone. He's got enough," said one.
They stood looking at me. I rubbed my shins, trying to stop the flow of blood.
No doubt they felt a sort of contemptuous pity, for one asked:
"Yuh wanna ride t' town now, nigger? Yuh reckon yuh know enough t' ride
now?"
"I wanna walk," I said, simply.
Maybe it sounded funny. They laughed.
"Well, walk, yuh black son-of-a-bitch!"
When they left they comforted me with:
"Nigger, yuh sho better be damn glad it wuz us yuh talked t' tha' way. Yuh're a
lucky bastard, 'cause if yuh'd said tha' t' somebody else, yuh might've been a dead
nigger now."
4
Negroes who have lived South know the dread of being caught alone upon the
streets in white neighborhoods after the sun has set. In such a simple situation as
this the plight of the Negro in America is graphically symbolized. While white
strangers may be in these neighborhoods trying to get home, they can pass
unmolested. But the color of a Negro's skin makes him easily recognizable, makes
him suspect, converts him into a defenseless target.
Late one Saturday night I made some deliveries in a white neighborhood. I
was pedaling my bicycle back to the store as fast as I could, when a police car,
swerving toward me, jammed me into the curbing.
"Get down and put up your hands!" the policemen ordered.
I did. They climbed out of the car, guns drawn, faces set, and advanced slowly.
"Keep still!" they ordered.
I reached my hands higher. They searched my pockets and packages. They
seemed dissatisfied when they could find nothing incriminating. Finally, one of
them said:
"Boy, tell your boss not to send you out in white neighborhoods this time of
night."
As usual, I said:
"Yes, sir."
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness
Michelle Alexander
Excerpt from the Introduction
Jarvious Cotton cannot vote. Like
his father, grandfather, great
grandfather, and greatgreat
grandfather, he has been denied
the right to participate in our
electoral democracy. Cotton’s
family tree tells the story of
several generations of black men
who were born in the United States
© Robert Gumpert 1996
but who were denied the most
basic freedom that democracy
promises—the freedom to vote for
those who will make the rules and laws that govern one’s life. Cotton’s great
greatgrandfather could not vote as a slave. His greatgrandfather was
beaten to death by the Ku Klux Klan for attempting to vote. His grandfather
was prevented from voting by Klan intimidation. His father was barred from
voting by poll taxes and literacy tests. Today, Jarvious Cotton cannot vote
because he, like many black men in the United States, has been labeled a
felon and is currently on parole.
Cotton’s story illustrates, in many respects, the old adage “The more things
change, the more they remain the same.” In each generation, new tactics
have been used for achieving the same goals—goals shared by the Founding
Fathers. Denying African Americans citizenship was deemed essential to the
formation of the original union. Hundreds of years later, America is still not
an egalitarian democracy. The arguments and rationalizations that have been
trotted out in support of racial exclusion and discrimination in its various
forms have changed and evolved, but the outcome has remained largely the
same. An extraordinary percentage of black men in the United States are
legally barred from voting today, just as they have been throughout most of
American history. They are also subject to legalized discrimination in
employment, housing, education, public benefits, and jury service, just as
their parents, grandparents, and greatgrandparents once were.
What has changed since the collapse of Jim Crow has less to do with the
basic structure of our society than with the language we use to justify it. In
the era of colorblindness, it is no longer socially permissible to use race,
explicitly, as a justification for discrimination, exclusion, and social contempt.
So we don’t. Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to
label people of color “criminals” and then engage in all the practices we
supposedly left behind. Today it is perfectly legal to discriminate against
criminals in nearly all the ways that it was once legal to discriminate against
African Americans. Once you’re labeled a felon, the old forms of
discrimination—employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of
the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps
and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service—are suddenly
legal. As a criminal, you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less
respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow. We
have not ended racial caste in America; we have merely redesigned it.
I reached the conclusions presented in this book reluctantly. Ten years ago, I
would have argued strenuously against the central claim made here—
namely, that something akin to a racial caste system currently exists in the
United States. Indeed, if Barack Obama had been elected president back
then, I would have argued that his election marked the nation’s triumph over
racial caste—the final nail in the coffin of Jim Crow. My elation would have
been tempered by the distance yet to be traveled to reach the promised land
of racial justice in America, but my conviction that nothing remotely similar
to Jim Crow exists in this country would have been steadfast.
Today my elation over Obama’s election is tempered by a far more sobering
awareness. As an African American woman, with three young children who
will never know a world in which a black man could not be president of the
United States, I was beyond thrilled on election night. Yet when I walked out
of the election night party, full of hope and enthusiasm, I was immediately
reminded of the harsh realities of the New Jim Crow. A black man was on his
knees in the gutter, hands cuffed behind his back, as several police officers
stood around him talking, joking, and ignoring his human existence. People
poured out of the building; many stared for a moment at the black man
cowering in the street, and then averted their gaze. What did the election of
Barack Obama mean for him?
Like many civil rights lawyers, I was inspired to attend law school by the civil
rights victories of the 1950s and 1960s. Even in the face of growing social
and political opposition to remedial policies such as affirmative action, I clung
to the notion that the evils of Jim Crow are behind us and that, while we
have a long way to go to fulfill the dream of an egalitarian, multiracial
democracy, we have made real progress and are now struggling to hold on to
the gains of the past. I thought my job as a civil rights lawyer was to join
with the allies of racial progress to resist attacks on affirmative action and to
eliminate the vestiges of Jim Crow segregation, including our still separate
and unequal system of education. I understood the problems plaguing poor
communities of color, including problems associated with crime and rising
incarceration rates, to be a function of poverty and lack of access to quality
education—the continuing legacy of slavery and Jim Crow. Never did I
seriously consider the possibility that a new racial caste system was
operating in this country. The new system had been developed and
implemented swiftly, and it was largely invisible, even to people, like me,
who spent most of their waking hours fighting for justice.
I first encountered the idea of a new racial caste system more than a decade
ago, when a bright orange poster caught my eye. I was rushing to catch the
bus, and I noticed a sign stapled to a telephone pole that screamed in large
bold print: The Drug War Is the New Jim Crow. I paused for a moment and
skimmed the text of the flyer. Some radical group was holding a community
meeting about police brutality, the new threestrikes law in California, and
the expansion of America’s prison system. The meeting was being held at a
small community church a few blocks away; it had seating capacity for no
more than fifty people. I sighed, and muttered to myself something like,
“Yeah, the criminal justice system is racist in many ways, but it really doesn’t
help to make such an absurd comparison. People will just think you’re crazy.”
I then crossed the street and hopped on the bus. I was headed to my new
job, director of the Racial Justice Project of the American Civil Liberties Union
(ACLU) in Northern California.
When I began my work at the ACLU, I assumed that the criminal justice
system had problems of racial bias, much in the same way that all major
institutions in our society are plagued with problems associated with
conscious and unconscious bias. As a lawyer who had litigated numerous
classaction employmentdiscrimination cases, I understood well the many
ways in which racial stereotyping can permeate subjective decisionmaking
processes at all levels of an organization, with devastating consequences. I
was familiar with the challenges associated with reforming institutions in
which racial stratification is thought to be normal—the natural consequence
of differences in education, culture, motivation, and, some still believe,
innate ability. While at the ACLU, I shifted my focus from employment
discrimination to criminal justice reform and dedicated myself to the task of
working with others to identify and eliminate racial bias whenever and
wherever it reared its ugly head.
By the time I left the ACLU, I had come to suspect that I was wrong about
the criminal justice system. It was not just another institution infected with
racial bias but rather a different beast entirely. The activists who posted the
sign on the telephone pole were not crazy; nor were the smattering of
lawyers and advocates around the country who were beginning to connect
the dots between our current system of mass incarceration and earlier forms
of social control. Quite belatedly, I came to see that mass incarceration in
the United States had, in fact, emerged as a stunningly comprehensive and
welldisguised system of racialized social control that functions in a manner
strikingly similar to Jim Crow.
Let America Be America Again
Langston Hughes
Let America be America again.
Let it be the dream it used to be.
Let it be the pioneer on the plain
Seeking a home where he himself is free.
(America never was America to me.)
Let America be the dream the dreamers dreamed-Let it be that great strong land of love
Where never kings connive nor tyrants scheme
That any man be crushed by one above.
Yet I'm the one who dreamt our basic dream
In the Old World while still a serf of kings,
Who dreamt a dream so strong, so brave, so true,
That even yet its mighty daring sings
In every brick and stone, in every furrow turned
That's made America the land it has become.
O, I'm the man who sailed those early seas
In search of what I meant to be my home-For I'm the one who left dark Ireland's shore,
And Poland's plain, and England's grassy lea,
And torn from Black Africa's strand I came
To build a "homeland of the free."
The free?
(It never was America to me.)
O, let my land be a land where Liberty
Is crowned with no false patriotic wreath,
But opportunity is real, and life is free,
Equality is in the air we breathe.
(There's never been equality for me,
Nor freedom in this "homeland of the free.")
Say, who are you that mumbles in the dark?
And who are you that draws your veil across the stars?
I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart,
I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars.
I am the red man driven from the land,
I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-And finding only the same old stupid plan
Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak.
I am the young man, full of strength and hope,
Tangled in that ancient endless chain
Of profit, power, gain, of grab the land!
Of grab the gold! Of grab the ways of satisfying need!
Of work the men! Of take the pay!
Of owning everything for one's own greed!
I am the farmer, bondsman to the soil.
I am the worker sold to the machine.
I am the Negro, servant to you all.
I am the people, humble, hungry, mean-Hungry yet today despite the dream.
Beaten yet today--O, Pioneers!
I am the man who never got ahead,
The poorest worker bartered through the years.
Who said the free? Not me?
Surely not me? The millions on relief today?
The millions shot down when we strike?
The millions who have nothing for our pay?
For all the dreams we've dreamed
And all the songs we've sung
And all the hopes we've held
And all the flags we've hung,
The millions who have nothing for our pay-Except the dream that's almost dead today.
O, let America be America again-The land that never has been yet-And yet must be--the land where every man is free.
The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's,
ME-Who made America,
Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain,
Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain,
Must bring back our mighty dream again.
Sure, call me any ugly name you choose-The steel of freedom does not stain.
From those who live like leeches on the people's lives,
We must take back our land again,
America!
O, yes,
I say it plain,
America never was America to me,
And yet I swear this oath-America will be!
Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,
The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,
We, the people, must redeem
The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.
The mountains and the endless plain-All, all the stretch of these great green states-And make America again!
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