"After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roamn, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world--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--and American, a Negro;two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it fom being torn asunder.
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...
-The Souls of Black Folk
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