In W.E.B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk, he introduces two concepts that are critical to understanding what life is like for the modern black American. These concepts are: Double Consciousness and Veil. These two concepts are intrinsically linked; to understand Double Consciousness it is necessary to understand the Veil and vice versa. Double Consciousness refers to the idea that black Americans live in two separate Americas: white America – where they are forced to behave according to the social protocol of white America and where they must live up to the expectations that non-black Americans they have towards black Americans – and black America, where there is a completely distinct protocol. “It is a peculiar sensation, this double consciousness,” DuBois writes. “This sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul with the yardstick of a world that looks on with amused contempt and pity. One always feels his duplicity: an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled efforts; two conflicting ideals in a single dark body, whose stubborn strength alone prevents it from being torn to pieces. (Souls of Black Folk 885) The Veil represents the cause and effect of Double Consciousness. In his essay "The Veil of Self-Awareness," DuBois says, "Then I realized with a certain suddenness that I was different from others; or perhaps, in heart, in life, and in desire, but excluded from their world by a vast veil” (“Veil” 1). of the stereotypes and assumptions made about them by whites; and of the inability of whites and blacks to connect and work in full solidarity, or to see each other as equals. "Why violent video games should not be banned "? Get an original essay This idea is also explored, albeit through a different metaphor, in Paul Laurence Dunbar's poem, "We Wear the Mask." In this poem, Dunbar specifically addresses the internal struggle of a black American working in America not black (especially white). “Why should the world be too wise, / In counting all our tears and sighs? / No, let them only see us , while / We wear the mask” (1033). In this stanza, Dunbar tells the reader that the veil can be used to benefit black Americans. This stanza raises the question: why let the cries of the oppressed fall on the ears that are intentionally covered? According to Dunbar, no good comes from expressing to whites the same things that can be expressed to other blacks. Instead, Dunbar chooses to use the Veil to his advantage to consciously shift his consciousness towards what white America expects so that his true consciousness can remain safely below. Not all black authors, however, agree that living a life behind a mask is ideal. In his poem “If We Must Die,” Claude McKay directly rails against the concept of changing his consciousness within white spheres, as a black man, to better fit into white society. The poem “If We Must Die” thematically tells the reader that it is better to die to live truthfully – with dignity – than to assimilate into white culture and die anyway, deprived of dignity. “If we must die, let it not be like pigs / hunted down and locked up in an inglorious place, / while mad and hungry dogs bark around us, / mocking our cursed fate. / If we must die, oh, let us die nobly, / Lest our precious blood be shed / In vain; then even the monsters we challenge / Will beforced to honor us even if dead! (483). McKay, through this poem, maintains the binary of oppressor versus oppressed (in this case, white versus black), but McKay's concept differs from DuBois's concept of Double Consciousness. because he argues: although this binary exists – and the black man must be aware that it exists – it is more ideal for a black man to fully embrace the black side of his consciousness and join in solidarity with his black community to overcome their problems. oppressor: “Oh, relatives! We must meet the common enemy; / Even if greatly outnumbered, let us show ourselves courageous, / And for their thousand blows let us deal a mortal blow! / But what is the open tomb in front of us? / Like men we will face the murderous and cowardly pack, / Pressed against the wall, dying, but fighting back! (483). He suggests that by meekly observing the white ideal of what a black man must be to survive, the black community should not sell out because it is smaller than the white majority, but should fight for its right to claim its black identity. identity. With this ideal, McKay launched the Harlem Renaissance, inspiring his colleagues such as Langston Hughes. Like McKay, Hughes writes of the beauty of his black community and warns against allowing himself to be divided into double consciousness, instead valuing the black man who embraces his self and his black community. Hughes begins his manifesto, The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, by saying, "One of the most promising young Negro poets once said to me, 'I want to be a poet, not a Negro poet,' meaning that I believe, 'I want to write like a white poet"; which unconsciously means "I would like to be a white poet"; which means "I would like to be white". And I was sorry that the young man said this, because no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And so I doubted that, with his desire to escape spiritually from his race, this boy would ever become a great poet. But this is the mountain that stands in the way of any true Negro art in America: this drive within the rush towards whiteness, the. desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as un-black as as-American as white as possible” (348). unless you hug the own blackness. Hughes interprets the veil between blacks and whites as a mountain; something to overcome. This, like McKay's writings, is in direct opposition to DuBois's idea that surviving in America requires better assimilation into white culture; or, better yet, assumes that surviving is not enough. To thrive in America, to create art, you must eliminate two separate consciousnesses and, instead, embrace your consciousness in its entirety: Blackness and all. Hughes doesn't think DuBois was wrong in his writings, per se – in fact, Hughes calls DuBois's writings "the best prose written by a Negro in America." But there is a time to meet the oppressor where he is, and for Hughes and his contemporaries in the Harlem Renaissance movement, that time is over. “…within the next decade,” writes Hughes, “I expect to see the work of a growing school of black artists who paint and model the beauty of dark faces and create with new techniques the expressions of their soul world. And the Negro dancers who will dance like flames and the singers who will continue to carry our songs to all who will listen, will be with us in even greater numbers tomorrow” (349). For Hughes, the way to dismantle the systematic oppression of Black people is through art. He works towards this goal in his poetry specifically by honoring the.