We Know W.E.B. DuBois's 'Double Consciousness. Whites' Dueling Double Consciousness Is Another Thing
Last edited Fri Feb 5, 2021, 12:53 AM - Edit history (2)
Notes from How to Be An Antiracist by Ibram X Kendi
1.
David Hume declared that all races are created unequal.
John Calhoun believed this. Thus he and his southern cohorts called slavery an ‘institution.’
Thomas Jefferson declared that all men are created equal, but never made the antiracist declaration that all racial groups are equals.
All he actually said was, “ it would be hazardous to affirm that, equally cultivated for a few generations,” the Negro “would not become” equal.
Humes’ declaration justifies segregationist ideas that a racial group is permanently inferior.
Jefferson’s declaration justifies assimilationist ideas that a racial group is temporarily inferior.
2.
In America, these two ideas have dueled within White consciousness, as revealed by our political and social history.
Since segregationists posit the incapability of a racial group to be civilized and developed, segregationist policies are geared toward segregating, enslaving, incarcerating, deporting, and killing, maligning and blaming the racialized body.
Since antiracists posit that racial groups are already civilized, antiracist policies are geared toward reducing racial inequities and creating equal opportunity for racialized bodies.
White people have generally advocated for both assimilationist and segregationist policies.
POC have generally advocated for both antiracist and assimilationist policies.
As W.E.B. DuBois said, the “history of the American Negro is the history of this strife”
— between the assimilationist and the antiracist,
— between mass civlizing and mass equalizing.
To DuBois, Kendi and POC, this dueling consciousness yielded strife between Black pride and yearning to be White. Kendi says that his own assimilationist ideas stopped him from noticing the racist policies rising high during Reagan’s drug war.
The dueling White consciousness has, from its relative position of power, shaped the struggle within Black consciousness. Black people have been encouraged by an undeniable White history of antiracist progress; they have also, as DuBois said, desired to remain Negro, discouraged by undeniable racist progress, from police violence to voter suppression to the 20th Cent. formation of racial hate groups like neonazis and the KKK.
3.
The historical double consciousness duels have produced
— the undeniable history of antiracist progress,
— the undeniable history of racist progress.
Before and after the Civil War, civil rights movement, and the first Black presidency, the White consciousness duels define the American body and at the same time, segregate the Black body and then instruct the Black body to assimilate.
The White body rejects the Black body attempts to assimilate into the American body — and history and consciousness duel anew.
Thus, the Black body in turn experiences the same duel.
To be an antiracist is to emancipate oneself from the dueling consciousness.
To be antiracist is to conquer the assimilationist consciousness and the segregationist consciousness. It means that White body no longer presents itself as the historical or present American body; and that the Black body no longer strives to be the American body,
knowing there is no such thing as the American body, only American bodies, racialized by power.
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