Identity in Zora Neale Hurston’s How It Feels to Be Colored Me

William Edward Burghardt Dubois is a man that has shaped and changed the world of Sociology. In 1903 He offers his own analysis of consciousness in his paper,Double consciousness and the Veil, he asks a question that could be said to be before it’s time. Simply, Can the self be more than one entity. Exploring the social world that is most accessible to to him, This is a world that is enveloped in oppression inequality many injustices. Being an educated man was not unheard of at the time but to be Black and educated man was not. Moreover, Living with this identity forces him to define his internal thoughts and feelings is such a

Hurston mentions that once she moved to Jacksonville she “was now a little coloured girl” (61), while when she lived in Eatonville she was just a girl. She wasn’t viewed the same way in Jacksonville, and this took it’s toll on how she saw herself. Hurston became “coloured”, and once this happened she was no longer the same person she was before. “I found out in certain ways. In my heart as well as in the mirror, I became a fast brown warranted not to rub or run”. (61) She does not feel comfortable in her own skin, and she wishes that she could rub the colour of her skin off in order to escape discrimination. The girl Hurston was before her move to Jacksonville was forever changed when she started to experience discrimination and living in a new

W.E.B. Du Bois, a prominent African American scholar in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, wrote many significant essays that challenged the dangerous societal view that black Americans weren’t capable of progress. In one of those essays, Strivings of the Negro People, he develops new terminology to discuss the many forces that act upon black Americans in a white dominated society, the most important of which is double-consciousness. The phrase, “double-consciousness”, refers to the division of the African American self into conflicting two facets: one being the American and the other the Negro, ever being forced to look at themselves through the eyes of a racist society.

In the W.E.B Dubois’s essay The Souls of Black Folk, Of Our Spiritual Strivings, he talks about many of his personal experiences of being an African American in the early 1900’s. Dubois develops 3 main central ideas that relate to his experiences. These central ideas are self-consciousness, double consciousness, and the ideal of human brother hood. In his essay he uses some textual evidence provided with some rhetoric and figurative language to prove his ideas.

One ever feels his twoness, - an American, a Negro; two souls in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder” (Du Bois 9). The since of double-consciousness was created by the White hegemony, but kept by the non-white percent of America’s population obligated to negotiate their individualism for the “Melting Pot” America generates.

If now, in the 21st century, African-Americans are still being mistreated, criminalized, and assaulted, the early 20th century was definitely a lot harder and that is what “How it feels to be colored me” is about. In this piece, Zora Neale Hurston describes her feelings and experiences as being a black woman in the United States in the beginning of the 20th century.

The theme of double-consciousness was first defined by Du Bois in The Souls of the Black Folk. He put the term “double-consciousness” in "a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. 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 twoness—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

W.E.B. DuBois wrote The Souls of Black Folk. In this work DuBois talks about life behind the shadow of race. In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois makes several points about how as African Americans race is always at the forefront of our minds. It plays a role in everything we do as well as sometimes what we are able to achieve. He talks about how Blacks struggle with “double consciousness” which he also refers to as “twoness”. DuBois defines double consciousness as the, “ …sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s

In the beginning of his book, The Souls of Black Folk¸ DuBois (1903) describes double consciousness as a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” in which “[o]ne ever feels his twoness,—an American, a

In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois coins “double consciousness”, as a “peculiar feeling… this sense of always looking at one 's self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois I). He goes on to say that as a black person, “one ever feels his twoness—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,” (Du Bois I). In other words, double consciousness refers to living with two identities that are at constant war with each other. For Du Bois, a black man can never simply just be an “American” or a “Negro”, for blacks will

The memorization of the facts and dates of events has proven to be the hardest part of learning history for me. The interdisciplinary nature of this course is what has helped me understand the material and be able to follow the “story” of history. Reading the words and perspective of important figures that live in the periods of American history that we are studying allowed me to see America through their eyes and allowed me to make sense of the prevailing feelings and ideas of the time. Reading works from writers of diverse viewpoints, gave me the opportunity to learn about an era from many different perspectives from the people who lived it. In particular, Zora Neale Hurston’s “How It Feels to be Colored Me’ offered a very different tone in the gloomy times of segregation. What I enjoyed about Hurston’s writing is that her distinct voice allowed me to hear her confidence and hope. Though the facts and dates will always be crucial to studying history, writing like Hurston’s can teach so much more about a time period than an Oakes

DuBois’s narration style in the first chapter of Souls of the Black Folk is very familiar, natural, almost as if he is telling you the story himself. He begins the first chapter with the main problem of every black American: the problem of double consciousness, ability to understand two different points of view at the same time. Specifically, to understand what it means to be black and American at the same time. The quote that exemplifies this best reds, “One ever feels 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 (2). I think this idea of double consciousness will continue to be prevalent throughout the entire book. DuBois’s notion of double consciousness consists of being split between “two warring ideals” one “American”, another “Negro;” you must see yourself how a white American might perceive you, which at that time was negative. What also struck me as interesting was the fact that while telling his personal autobiography, DuBois shows how his community shaped him because he lives a life of two parts and it is the color line that divides his life.

It doesn’t take long to figure out that race and ethnicity issues continue to affect America - a quick glance at the news will show the latest riot, hate crime, or police brutality incident. This centuries old struggle has given rise to a number of literary works on the topic, many of which take a different approach to the issue. W.E.B. Du Bois, for instance, published the work The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, arguing for blacks’ right to equality in a horrifically segregated society. In these essays, Du Bois coined the term “double-consciousness,” wherein those with black skin must view the world both from their own perspective, and from the perspective of the predominately white society. The short story Recitatif by Toni Morrison explores this concept through the removal of the characters’ races, and the film Do the Right Thing, directed by Spike Lee, tells a story to demonstrate it. While the former shows double-consciousness through the usage of ambiguity, the latter almost directly references the concept. Taken together, these two sources argue a multi-faceted version double-consciousness, wherein society alienates the characters in ways that go beyond just the color of one’s skin.

Before Du Bois brought the term “double consciousness” to light, there was no way to describe such an unspoken phenomenon. In W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk (1903) he introduces and describes how African Americans and their history have been shaped by the state of living in and wanting to overcome double consciousness. Du Bois perfectly describes double consciousness in African Americans as living behind a veil. The veil is bittersweet and produces a “second-sight” in America. From one perspective, the veil is a curse. On the contrast, it is what has made African Americans what they are today. In Du Bois’ own words, double consciousness is a “sense of always looking at one 's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one 's

The idea of double consciousness, termed by W.E.B. Du Bois, for African Americans deals with the notion that one’s self has duality in being black and American. It is the attempt to reconcile two cultures that make up the identity of black men and women. One can only see through the eyes of another. A veil exists in this idea, where one has limits in how he or she can see or be seen. This individual is invisible to the onlookers of the veil, and those onlookers may be invisible to the individual. This then alters how one can truly interpret their conscious. This concept is one that has been explored in various themes of literature,