The Official Website of Edward Carson
Welcome to the webpage of Edward Carson
  • Home Page
  • About Carson
  • Teaching and Research
  • Public Talks
  • Race Matters Podcast
  • Contact and Office Hours
  • News & Topics Blog

The Color Line

7/15/2020

0 Comments

 
“Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in my own house?” W.E.B Du Bois exclaimed in his essay, Of Our Spiritual Strivings, as he pondered being a problem: a seventh son after other civilizations. The Negro watched Indians, Romans, Greeks, and Mongolians take a position of authority over the simple Negro. This white world reminded the Negroes of their inferiority, yet promised them a place with God if they behaved. And though early playground rejections would impact his later pathology toward Negro radicalism, it was his sense of understanding that equality in America could be achieved, though by his death, Du Bois concluded America was not ready for the Negro.

Du Bois shaped this double-consciousness as a sense of racial awareness and the veil; it was within this metaphorical Veil that Black people faced oppression. In order to deal with oppression and themselves as a race, Negroes must become aware of the Veil. This point seems silly in that who would be unaware of their oppression; however, Du Bois speaks to years of Jim Crow, sharecropping, and tenant farming in which the Negro’s labor and welfare were exploited. Du Bois’s Veil was expressed in the literary piece, Invisible Man; here, Ralph Ellison introduces the American conscious to a Negro mind that becomes aware of why he was oppressed.
​
This declaration was made after Ellison and a white man accidentally collided on the streets of New York. As Ellison sought to help the white man up, he screamed nigger at him; in a sense of frustration, Ellison reached for his knife to stab the man. It was at this moment the Veil was lifted; he knew he was an invisible man. White society. Du Bois and other Black actors sought to challenge the normative process that white America could shape the Negro into a proto post-American  slave.



0 Comments



Leave a Reply.

    Author

    This blog reflects the views of a soul brotha who believes in radical love. I must confess a love for Black & brown folk, gay folk, bi & transgender folk, Asian folk, non-binary folk, and my white allies.

    Archives

    February 2023
    March 2021
    September 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.