Black History Month--A Reflection

     We are nearing the end of the month of February, also known as Black History Month.  Some are offended by the concept of a Black History Month, as if to emphasize the contributions African-Americans have made to America is a bad thing.  I understand.  I would also be upset if I am used to having 12-months of domination and then I am reduced to 11-months of domination. 
     But, it is during this month that I always reflect on a book, although written more than a century, still is a rather poignant exegesis of the African-American experience (and thus, my own experience), "The Souls of Black Folks."  If I had written a book about my own experience directly, it still would not match the accuracy of Du Bois' analysis.  When I read the book, it feels like someone spent years attempting to understand me, then wrote it down and published those findings for the world to see:

" After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, [Jasper] 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. [Jasper] 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 being torn asunder.

The history of [Jasper] is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self–conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. [Jasper] would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. [Jasper] 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." 

At the end of every February, I feel this tension.  This sense that despite what progress may have been made, I will never be quite at peace with the world.  I live in two worlds that cannot collide.  One where I am free, another where I am not.