Double – Consciousness

Double – Consciousness

What is double-consciousness? Is it restricted to just black
people alone?

In simple terms what does this concept mean to a black
man in racist America?

Double-consciousness simply means the two-ness a black
man feels in America; the two-ness of being a so-called Negro
and a so-called American. This Double-conscious then becomes
the unreconciled striving of the black man in America to be
both a Negro and a so-called American without being hated
and looked down upon by white America.

First let me make clear to you that both these values are
erroneous misconceptions. There is no such thing as a Negro,
or a black man for that matter. We must restrict ourselves to
deal with specific ethnic groups and not the color of their skin.
The words Negro and black are used merely for identification
purposes – it merely illustrates a group of ethnic people that
have been stolen from their country.

Where is this place called “Negro-ville”? I have yet to find
it! Secondly, if we believe that we are Americans, we are in
desperate need of a psychiatrist. How can we be Americans in
a land that was not ours to begin with. And if there is a black
man out there that really believes he is an American he is just
as sick and brainwashed as white America. We are pseudo
(false) Americans and nothing more. That is the reality we will
not face and yet that is the very reality we must deal with if
we ever expect to be unified under one common goal for
progress.

Double-consciousness is believing that just because we are
so-called Americans it is possible for us to also attain equality
and justice in a country that was built on inequality and
injustice.

Black people with this double consciousness will say I am
lying when I state that “Justice for the black man in America
is merely a mirage, an un-obtainable “Utopian” goal that will
never come to pass. Not as long as we continue to toy with the
external workings of the so-called American civilization. It
must be remembered that true strength for any race of people
can only come from within their own social structure and not
from the misguided conceptions of another people who use
greed and exploitation as their means of survival.

Total black consciousness and progress can only come if
there is a constant and never ending strength from the internal
functioning of a human organism.

This simply means that we must become committed to our
self-identity, which is African and to our role toward progress,
which is unity. We must see the reality, that if we continue to
accept white American tokenism and the subordinate role of
the “Good Nigger” that goes with it, we will, in the final
analysis destroy our mighty people.

The double-consciousness, if we go back in history, is a
direct outgrowth of the so-called Emancipation Proclamation
that never really freed blacks, it merely took us out of one
form of slavery into another. White America tells us we are
free, and we belive it. The Panther political prisoners are very
good examples of what freedom is not! They told us we would
have an equal education and we have gotten an inferior
education instead. They told us we could have justice under
the law – but what they didn’t tell us was that there is a
“white law” and a “black law.” And if you don’t believe it
you can ask Martin Luther King, but he’s not alive. In white
America’s courtrooms, I’m afraid “black” ceases to be
“beautiful”.

We have no choice then but to destroy this
double-consciousness before it destroys us.

THE OLDER GENERATION
Shall we give up on the older generation? I should hope
not! We must learn to understand all facets of our population
in order to bring about a meaningful relationship for our
people as a whole. After all, if it wasn’t for the strength of the
older generations we would not be yelling black power or any
kind of power. However, the final victory lies in the hands of
the young black man who confronts the dangers of
double-consciousness and who is positive and not negative to
the reality that ours is a “Mighty Race” that will never accept
defeat.