Amiri Baraka Double Consciousness Audio Lecture and Strivings of the Negro People by WEB Du Bois

Double-consciousness is a concept in social philosophy referring, originally, to a source of inward “twoness” putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and devaluation in a white-dominated society. The concept is associated with William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, who introduced the term into social thought in his groundbreaking The Souls of Black Folk (1903).” From the article below.

 “Amiri Baraka, a BAM founder, wrote: We felt (and I still do feel) that Afro American people were and are still involved in a war. A war for Self Determination, Self Respect and Self Defense. It is a war for equal rights and democracy. But how can we press this struggle to victory if we suffer form a Double consciousness (Bracey et. al 17).” (From The Black Arts Movement’s Attack on W.E.B. Du Bois’ Theory of Double Consciousness by Tony Lindsay)

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SUPPLEMENTAL I: Strivings of the Negro People By W. E. B. Du Bois

Audio version of the above essay: (Feel free to click the audio below and then pop the article out to read along.)

SUPPLEMENTAL II: WEB Du Bois Criticizes Capitalism

W.E.B. DuBois Speaks! Socialism and the American Negro. The venerable W. E. B. DuBois (1868-1963), historian and activist, gives an address to the Wisconsin Socialist Club in Madison on socialism and the struggle of Black people in America. This speech was given on April 9, 1960 when DuBois was over 90 years of age and just months before his removal to Africa where he died Ghana on August 27, 1963 at the age of 95. In the speech Du Bois asserts that African Americans must learn the truth about socialism that they may “preserve their culture, get rid of poverty, ignorance and disease, and help America live up at least to a shadow of its vain boast as the land of the free and the home of the brave.”

To learn more go to RBG Communiversity’s eLibrary| Imamu Amiri Baraka Folder ; W.E.B. Du Bois Folder