The Measuring Tape of the World Revisited: African Americans and Global Reconciliation

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More than a century has passed since W.E.B. Du Bois wrote the decisively insightful book The Souls of Black Folk, wherein he described how the successes and abilities of African Americans were marginalized within the greater society. Yet, while his book thoroughly explored the disturbing realities of marginalization, more revealing was his acknowledgement that African Americans, though resilient, were also coping with an internal struggle between their own socially constructed identity and the dilemma of a double-consciousness. (1) Du Bois wrote:

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. One ever feels his two-ness--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. (2)

Du Bois went on to write about this internal struggle and reveal its genesis in the American Negro's quest to comfortably and successfully reconcile his place in two worlds--America and Negro racial …