WEB Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, seems to speak for a raceless society where quality of character was the only basis for being judged. Yet this is not what Du Bois saw in his time and it is not what we see today. The idea of ​​race is still very distorted in the minds of many people, and it leads them to misjudge historical and current phenomena. So it seems that the color line was not only the problem of the 20th century, as Du Bois claimed, but also of the 21st. This is why the novel Autobiography of a Former Colored Man by James Weldon Johnson is still so relevant. The novel demonstrates the true meaning of Du Bois's theory of double consciousness, and it also shows the responses that black people may have to their current state "within the Veil"; Furthermore, Johnson seems to support both Locke and Du Bois in their reasoning that the ultimate goal should be a society where double consciousness could not exist because the discourse becomes one of absolute equality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Before the Autobiography can be understood as a depiction of double consciousness, the idea itself must be examined. As Adolph L. Reed Jr. argues in WEB Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line, this is a crucial first step because the phrase "double consciousness" has been so widely used to represent d other ideas that it can be distorted. . He says that “various intellectuals have misinterpreted Du Bois in ahistorical ways and instead project their own thoughts onto him” (92). But we must remember that this can be true for any author. Regardless, later in Du Bois's career, while studying at Harvard and then in Germany, the academic question of race became a "question of culture and cultural history" instead of a pseudoscience that claimed a fundamental difference between black people and black people. whites (124). He came to the same conclusion in his essay Conservation of Races, that race is an inadequate construct and that its basis is socio-economic and ideological, in other words cultural. So what is the idea of ​​double consciousness? This could be read as a struggle of black people to resolve opposing identities – one as the object of a social problem or simply different, and the other as a person equal in opportunity and potential. Johnson's novel is able to first demonstrate the basis of Du Bois's double consciousness, that race is socially constructed, and it also shows the identity struggle between the two states of mind mentioned above . The moment of awareness of the veil and a double consciousness is often a monumental event that many authors have written about, including Du Bois himself. He says: “I remember well the moment when the shadow swept over me” (694). Johnson's narrator also has a similar experience. As a young child, the narrator identifies with his white peers and fights with "the niggers" until one day his teacher asks all white scholars to stand up. The narrator stands up and the teacher responds: “You sit down for the moment and get up with the others” (808). This is when the narrator becomes known to his other self, who, due to social and cultural factors, is seen differently. The narrator says about this first experience: I have often experienced this hour, this day, this week, when the miracle of my passage from one world to another took place; because I have indeed passed into another world. From thisthat moment, I looked with other eyes, my thoughts were colored, my words dictated, my actions limited by a single domination, an omnipresent idea. (810) This not only shows the importance of the event to the narrator as a young child, but also demonstrates very well the idea of ​​double consciousness as Du Bois understood it. The novel's underlying assumption is that "race" (whether identified as black or white) is seemingly arbitrary. This is seen in the many times the narrator is able to change groups quite freely. Obviously, if race were anything other than how society perceives you, this change wouldn't be as possible. In “The Mirror and the Veil: The Passing Romance and the Quest for American Racial Identity,” John Sheehy says: “The boy was in a unique situation: he could choose his race. This choice is of course not simple. » (401). He goes on to argue that the narrator can be seen as "living on the color line" due to the extreme fluidity of his racial identity (406). In “Contemporary Themes in Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man,” Robert E. Fleming argues that the fact that the narrator is anonymous in the novel “underlines the major psychological problem of the novel; that is to say, in a very real sense, the narrator does not know who he is and his autobiography relates his vain search for identity” (121). This is true throughout the novel until the end. Sheehy argues that beneath the depiction of race as a dichotomy, black and white, the narrator strikes a subtle, subversive note when he says, "I'm happy to be what I am." This could be seen as the narrator overcoming the simple black/white mentality and ultimately choosing an identity that is neither black nor white. There are many different ways to respond to the problem of double consciousness. Du Bois points out that there are two extreme positions that can be taken. Africanize America or “whiten its Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism” (695). Neither outcome is desirable; However, Du Bois indicates quite clearly what he thinks the best solution would be. This is when a man can “be both black and American, without being cursed and spat upon by his fellows, without having the doors of opportunity slammed shut in his face” (695). What is being avoided here is further separation of the races and the radicalization of black or white positions on issues of race relations. One can only assume that Du Bois saw a future in which people could work together toward common goals, while resisting the temptation of complete integration – a very similar future. Arguably, Locke also believed that race was an artificial standard, as he suggests in The New Negro. He writes that black people see themselves through “the distorted perspective of a social problem” (985). double consciousness, considered, treated and raised not as an equal but as an anomaly, Locke also recognizes the fact that this is a distorted perspective, as Du Bois argued throughout his career after coming to the conclusion that race is a social construct. The goal, then, is a society in which race is recognized for what it is: an outdated discursive lie that has no merit in today's society. Of course, this is not to say that race relations are unimportant, indeed they are. But they must be considered as historical social measures which are being perpetuated today in an unjustified manner. Additionally, Johnson is able to help us understand this concept through the narrator's nebulous “race.” The answer to the problem of double consciousness is>.