It is the same defence which peasants of the Middle Age used and which left its stamp on their character for centuries. But there is a patent defence at hand,-the defence of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. Political defence is becoming less and less available, and economic defence is still only partially effective. And how natural this is! The death of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner proved long since to the Negro the present hopelessness of physical defence. “Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors to-day it must be prepared to see its black proletariat turn that same two-edged weapon against itself. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity closed roughly in his face.” He wouldn't bleach his Negro blood in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He does not wish to Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa.
In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife - this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. 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. “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.
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