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.
This quote provides the seminal definition of "double-consciousness," describing the unique experience of Black Americans seeing themselves through the prejudiced eyes of white society.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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 holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.