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ISSN: 1540-5699. © Copyright by Ahead Publishing House (imprint: Okcir Press). All Rights Reserved.
HUMAN ARCHITECTURE
Journal of the Sociology of Self-
A Publication of OKCIR: The Omar Khayyam Center for Integrative Research in Utopia, Mysticism, and Science (Utopystics)
There is a connection between FrantzFanon’s work and W.E.B. DuBois’ conceptof double consciousness. DuBois first de-fined double consciousness in 1903, and al-though the concept is familiar withinAfrican American Studies it has not beenelaborated upon thoroughly. Fanon’s workshows that double consciousness is also acondition of colonized people. This connec-tion demonstrates that the positions of Af-rican Americans, and people of color ingeneral, are in at least one way similar tothe positions of colonized people. Ameri-cans do not think our country practices co-lonialism, but the common experience of
double consciousness among oppressedpeoples illuminates the common positionof whiteness, and white people, as that ofoppressor both in the U.S. and abroad, nowand in the past. Also, the double conscious-ness link strengthens the claim that AfricanAmericans are colonized within their owncountry.
The connection between double con-sciousness in the U.S. and in colonialismhas not been explored. DuBois spent a lot ofhis life fighting colonialism in Africathrough his writings and the Pan AfricanConferences, but he never connected hisobservation of double consciousness in the
Marc Black is a graduate student in Applied Linguistics at UMass Boston. writing his thesis on double con-sciousness and communicative competence. His BA is in African American Studies. His research addresses thebenefits of race consciousness over colorblindness as exposure of, and resistance to, white supremacy. Thisresearch focuses on sociolinguistics, African American literature, Marxian philosophers, and hidden ideology.
Fanon and DuBoisian Double Consciousness
Marc Black
University of Massachusetts Boston––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––––
Abstract: Within an American context, W.E.B. DuBois defines double consciousness as blacksbeing forced to view themselves through white perspectives while maintaining their own self-definitions. Works of Frantz Fanon, and other classic writers on colonialism, show evidence thatcolonized peoples also experience the condition of double consciousness. This similarity of dou-ble consciousness between people of color in the U.S. and colonized people historically supportsthe claim of close connections between racism in the U.S. and colonialism internationally. Whendouble consciousness is unilateral, when it is experienced only by the oppressed, double con-sciousness is unhealthy. However, when whites and colonists develop their own abilities to seetheir racial positions from the perspectives of people of color, then this multilateral double con-sciousness can enable a form of critical interracial dialogue. The transition from harmful unilat-eral double consciousness to critical multilateral double consciousness has not been explicitlysuggested. Some views of recent writers on whiteness and multicultural education, however, areconducive to the development of white, and multilateral, double consciousness. By linkingDuBoisian double consciousness with Fanon and with multilateral double consciousness, newdialogues about race might lead to new insights into hidden power dynamics and advancestoward race conscious struggles against white supremacy.
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U.S. with double consciousness in the restof the world. Fanon was familiar with someAfrican American writers, but he did notrecognize the common issue of double con-sciousness. A recent article in the
Journal ofBlack Studies
, by T. Owens Moore (2005), en-titled, “A Fanonian Perspective on DoubleConsciousness,” argues against the conceptof double consciousness and misses howtightly Fanon and DuBois can be con-nected. However, double consciousnessconnects DuBois and Fanon and relates rac-ism in the U.S. to colonialism historically.
DuBois describes double conscious-ness as follows:
After the Egyptian and Indian, theGreek and Roman, the Teuton andMongolian, the Negro is a sort ofseventh son, born with a veil, andgifted with second-sight in thisAmerican world—a world whichyields him no true self-conscious-ness, but only lets him see himselfthrough the revelation of the otherworld. It is a particular sensation,this double consciousness, thissense of always looking at one’sself through the eyes of others, ofmeasuring one’s soul by the tape ofa world that looks on in amusedcontempt and pity. One ever feelshis twoness—an American, a Ne-gro; two souls, two thoughts, twounreconciled strivings; two war-ring ideals in one dark body, whosedogged strength alone keeps itfrom being torn asunder (DuBois,1965, p. 215).
DuBois explains that African Ameri-cans are forced to view themselves from,and as, the negative perspectives of the out-side society. Having two antagonistic iden-tities means that a lot of time and energy isspent negotiating and enduring the con-flicts between who one is as a person andhow one struggles to live with the misrep-
resentations of the outside world. Havingone’s own sense of self and also having im-posed contempt for an ascribed self, havingtwoness, is what DuBois calls double con-sciousness. The true self consciousness pre-vented by this condition may be a mergingof two positive identities (black and Amer-ican) without the harmful ascription, con-tempt and negation from the outsideworld. DuBois (1965) writes,
The history of the American Negrois the history of this strife—thislonging to attain self-consciousmanhood, to merge his double selfinto a better and truer self. In thismerging he wishes neither of theolder selves to be lost. He wouldnot Africanize America…Hewould not bleach his Negrosoul…He simply wishes to make itpossible for a man to be both a Ne-gro and an American, without be-ing cursed and spit upon by hisfellow, without having the doors ofOpportunity closed roughly in hisface.
This, then, is the end of hisstriving; to be a co-worker in thekingdom of culture… (p. 215).
Instead of antagonism between one’sown sense of self and imposed contempt,DuBois is suggesting a merging of positivemeanings of blackness and American. Hewrote extensively and in detail about thepositive meanings of blackness in terms ofAfrica’s early civilizations and their contri-butions as leaders in world history (see
TheWorld and Africa
). It is these contributions,and these meanings of African heritage,that have been supplanted by the negativecontempt with which blackness has be-come associated. Instead of a merging ofbeing both black and American, each in apositive way, twoness and double con-sciousness remains.
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Writing in 1996, about ninety years af-ter
Souls of Black Folk
, Henry Louis Gates Jr.and Cornel West (1996) write in
The Futureof the Race
,
The rich African traditions—in-cluding the kinetic orality, passion-ate physicality, improvisationalintellectuality, and combative spir-ituality—would undergo creativetransformation when brought intocontact with European languagesand rituals in the context of theNew World. (p. 81)
They continue,
[T]he specificity of black cul-ture…lies in both the African andAmerican character of black peo-ple’s attempts to sustain their men-tal sanity and spiritual health, sociallife and political struggle in themidst of a slaveholding white su-premacist civilization that vieweditself as the most enlightened, free,tolerant and democratic experimentin human history. (p. 79)
Also,
This unrelenting assault on blackhumanity produced the funda-mental condition of black culture—that of black invisibility and name-lessness. (p. 80)
And connecting explicitly to DuBoisthey write,
Whites need not understand or livein the black world in order tothrive. But blacks must grapplewith the painful ‘double conscious-ness’ that may result [in DuBois’words], “An almost morbid senseof personality and a moral hesitan-cy which is fatal to self-confi-
dence.” (p. 86)
So the self-proclaimed enlightened,free, tolerant and democratic Americaseems that way because it does not look atthe struggles for sanity and struggles withdouble consciousness faced by blacks andother people of color. Two examples of thisinvisibility, and the invisibility of doubleconsciousness, are provided by RichardWright in
Native Son
and
Black Boy
.In
Native Son
, it is Bigger Thomas’ firstday as chauffeur for the Daltons. He is ex-tremely uncomfortable dealing with whitepeople and working for them. When hemeets Jan, Mary Dalton’s boyfriend, Biggersees Jan’s condescending friendliness asalien and mocking. When Jan holds out hishand to shake,
Bigger’s right hand gripped thesteering wheel and he wondered ifhe ought to shake hands with thiswhite man. (Wright, 1987, p. 66)
Then,
“First of all,” Jan continued…“Don’t say sir to me. I’ll call youBigger and you’ll call me Jan.That’s the way it’ll be between us.How’s that?” … Bigger did not an-swer… He flushed warm with an-ger… (Wright, 1987, p. 67)
This is the invisibility of double con-sciousness. Bigger has to try to understandhow Jan and Mary see him, but Jan andMary do not even have to know that theyhave no clue about Bigger’s perspective, at-titude or feelings. Bigger is entirely over-whelmed and stymied by his doubleconsciousness. Jan and Mary have no dou-ble consciousness at all.
A different response to invisibility anddouble consciousness is shown in Wright’sautobiography,
Black Boy
. There, Richard ismore familiar and comfortable with the
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whites and he has philosophical insightinto the alienation. Richard is in a park out-side the restaurant where he works, listen-ing to white waitresses talking to eachother. He says,
I wished that Negroes, too, couldlive as thoughtlessly, as serenely, asthey…They knew nothing of hateand fear, and strove to avoid allpassion…They lived on the surfaceof their days… For these poor, ig-norant white girls to have under-stood my life would have meantnothing short of a vast revolutionin theirs. And I was convinced thatwhat they needed to make themcomplete and grown-up in theirliving was the inclusion in theirpersonalities of a knowledge oflives such as I lived and sufferedcontainedly. (Wright, 1993, p. 319-20)
Here, Richard deals with the views ofwhites and responds with analytical cri-tique that saves him from the miasma andconsternation endured by Bigger. His dou-ble consciousness becomes a form of in-sight, of second sight, as DuBois says.Many other examples of double conscious-ness developing in blacks and lacking inwhites can be found in African Americanliterature and non-fiction.
It’s not just American blacks, though,who are forced to view themselves throughthe perspectives of others while those oth-ers do not have to share such a burden orsuch second sight. Frantz Fanon, in
TheWretched of the Earth
, and in
Black Skin WhiteMasks
, reveals that colonized people haveDuBoisian double consciousness too.
On the surface, though, Fanon seems toreject this connection. He writes,
[E]very culture is first and fore-most national, and the problemsfor which Richard Wright or Lang-
ston Hughes had to be on the alertwere fundamentally different fromthose faced by Senghor…. (Fanon,1968, p. 154)
But then he reveals exactly the colo-nized struggle of twoness that AfricansAmericans share. He writes,
“Speaking as an Algerian and aFrenchman”… Stumbling over theneed to assume two nationalities,two determinations, the intellectu-al who is Arab and French..., if hewants to be sincere with himself,chooses the negation of one ofthese two determinations. Usually,unwilling or unable to choose,these intellectuals collect all thehistorical determinations whichhave conditioned them and placethemselves in a thoroughly “uni-versal perspective.” (Fanon, 1968,p. 155)
The conflicting two perspectives, or thetwo identities and selves, seem comparableto the “two souls, two thoughts, two unrec-onciled strivings; two warring ideals in onedark body,” that define DuBoisian twoness.One thought and striving is self-definedwhile the other is imposed from the out-side, white, world. Bigger, Richard andFanon all struggle with contradictions be-tween these two warring ideals whilewhites, both in the U.S. and in the broaderworld, do not even have to realize that theyare seen by and as racial others. This is thewhite supremacy of unilateral double con-sciousness. Other examples from
TheWretched of the Earth
reiterate the doubleconsciousness of colonized people. Fanon(1968) writes,
The colonized intellectual, at thevery moment when he undertakesa work of art, fails to realize he isusing techniques and a language
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borrowed from the occupier. Thecolonized intellectual who returnsto his people through works of artbehaves in fact like a foreigner. (p.160)
And,
[T]he first duty of the colonizedpoet is to clearly define the peo-ple... We cannot go resolutely for-ward unless we first realize ouralienation. We have taken every-thing from the other side. Yet theother side has given us nothing ex-cept to sway us in its directionthrough a thousand twists, exceptlure us, seduce us, and imprisonus… We must focus on that zone ofhidden fluctuation where the peo-ple can be found… (p. 163)
Fanon explains extensively how colo-nized intellectuals try to liberate their peo-ple, but the colonized liberators talk, thinkand act like the colonizers. It is only whenthese intellectuals return to the generalpopulation that they can regain their indig-enous perspective from which to critiquetheir colonized perspective. It is the peoplewho liberate the intellectuals, not the otherway around. Liberation, in Fanon’s sense,includes assessing one’s colonized perspec-tive through one’s indigenous perspective.He does not claim that people can orshould forget the white European perspec-tive, but he maintains that people shouldnot be dominated by, and limited to, theoutside perspective. This is the merging ofstrivings that DuBois also seeks. Fanonmakes this point in
Black Skin White Masks
:
Sealed into that crushing object-hood, I turned beseechingly to oth-ers. Their attention was aliberation, running over my bodysuddenly abraded into nonbeing,endowing me once more with an
agility that I had thought I had lost,and by taking me outside theworld, restoring me to it. I stum-bled, and the movements, the atti-tudes, the glances of the other fixedme there… (Fanon, 1967, p. 109)
Fanon comes closest to DuBoisian dou-ble consciousness by saying,
Overnight the Negro has been giv-en two frames of reference withinwhich he has to place him-self…[H]is customs and the sourc-es on which they are based, werewiped out because they were inconflict with a civilization that hedid not know and that imposed it-self on him. (Fanon, 1967, p. 110)
Other writers on colonialism also re-veal problems of double consciousness. In
The Colonizer and the Colonized
, AlbertMemmi (1967) says,
The candidate for assimilation al-most always comes to tire of the ex-orbitant price which he must payand which he never finishes ow-ing…[H]e has assumed all the ac-cusations and condemnations ofthe colonizer, that he is becomingaccustomed to looking at his ownpeople through the eyes of theirprocurer. (p. 123)
This is double consciousness.In
Orientalism
, Edward Said provides abroad framework within which doubleconsciousness can be situated. He writes,
[Orientalism] is, rather than ex-presses, a certain will or intentionto understand, in some sense con-trol, manipulate, even to incorpo-rate what is a manifestly different(or alternative and novel) world…(Said, 1978, p. 12)
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Orientalism means Europeans, coloniz-ers and whites have institutionalized theirprojections of identities onto people ofcolor. Developing and imposing such nega-tive views comprehensively and absolutelymeans Orientalism, colonialism and racismrender people of color dehumanized sothey can be exploited. What remains of peo-ple’s humanity is a nuisance or confronta-tion to white supremacy and a widespreadstruggle of invisibility and double con-sciousness for subjugated people. Like Ri-chard Wright, Memmi and Fanon, Arabsand Muslims face this struggle too. Said(1978) says,
The net effect of this remarkableomission [of Arab literature] inmodern American Awareness ofthe Arab or Islamic Orient is to keepthe region and its people conceptu-ally emasculated, reduced to “atti-tudes,” “trends,” statistics: in short,dehumanized. Since An Arab poetor novelist—and there are many—writes of his experiences, of his val-ues, of his humanity (howeverstrange that may be), he effectivelydisrupts the various patterns (im-ages, clichés, abstractions) bywhich the Orient is represented. Aliterary text speaks more or less di-rectly of a living reality (p. 291).
Said shows that people are forced tocontend both with their own lived experi-ences and with their imposed invisibility.This is double consciousness. Aimé Césaire(1972) makes a similar point when he says,
They talk to me about progress,about “achievements,” diseasescured, improved standards of liv-ing. I am talking about societiesdrained of their essence…extraor-dinary possibilities wiped out.They throw facts at my head, statis-tics, mileages of road, canals, and
railroad tracks. I am talking aboutthousands of men sacrificed… (p.21)
Césaire must assert his being againstthe claims of progress that make others andunmake him. There is no room for Césairein their progress, in their living. This is sim-ilar to what Wright (1993) says,
I wished that Negroes, too, couldlive as thoughtlessly, as serenely, asthey…They knew nothing of hateand fear, and strove to avoid allpassion…They lived on the surfaceof their days… (p. 319-20)
The waitresses who live on the surfaceof their days and the colonizers who talk ofmileages of roads share a way of being thatrequires the invisibility of others. And theseothers, like Césaire and Wright, have to livewith their own invisibility. If whites realizethey are seen as projecting invisibility, evenif they don’t mean to, then the whites canstart noticing that and how they are seen byand as others. This way, by developingtheir own double consciousness, thesewhite people can become more humanthemselves by recognizing, not negating,other people. Everyone would be human-ized. Césaire (1972) writes,
[T]he colonizer, who in order toease his conscience gets into thehabit of seeing the other man as ananimal, accustoms himself to treat-ing him like an animal, and tendsobjectively to transform himselfinto an animal. It is this result, thisboomerang effect of colonialism,that I wanted to point out. (p. 20)
The whites are also dehumanized be-cause they exile themselves from the rest ofhumanity and lose sight of their isolation.They lose sight because they sublimatetheir impunity into a tradition and a way of
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life. Then they say they are colorblind, sothere is no more racism.
So unilateral double consciousness andinvisibility are white problems. The dehu-manization of people of color is the incom-pleteness of whites and colonizers. They donot realize they are incomplete or dehu-manized themselves because their wholelanguage and outlook tricks them intothinking they are normal and healthy. In-deed, Herbert Marcuse explains that agroup of people can construct meaningsand realities that make them feel that theyhave complete and sufficient perspectivesonly because they prevent themselves fromseeing other views and perspectives thatwould show them the limitations of theirviews. Marcuse (1964) calls this, “Closureof meaning” (pp. 181, 184). People can livelike horses with blinders or like ostriches.What is missing from their views is howthey are seen as whites or as colonists bypeople of color or by colonized people.
By developing their own double con-sciousness, whites could expose and cri-tique their own closure of meanings whilesharing the burdens of double conscious-ness they impose on others. When whitessee themselves as white from the perspec-tives of people of color, they can see theirplace in the world in a whole new way thatthey did not even realize had been closedoff to them. When they are shocked to hearthemselves saying, “I had no idea I cameacross like that,” then they can begin a vastrevolution in their lives and develop whitedouble consciousness as a way to learnabout themselves. And this revolution intheir lives can contribute to the DuBoisianmerging of strivings of everyone.
This transformation from closure ofmeaning to double consciousness is a socialprocess. It is one version of Fanon’s concep-tion of liberation. Fanon (1967, pp. 109-10;1968, pp. 160, 163) argues that groundingoneself in an indigenous perspective canprovide the vantage point from which toassess one’s internalized colonizer perspec-
tive. When the colonized intellectuals re-turn to the people, this return can help theintellectuals regain the identities andworld-views that had been perverted bythe adopted colonized perspective. In thisway, double consciousness can become aform of critical thinking rather than a lan-guishing in consternation and alienation.
For the colonizers and for the whiteAmericans, embracing the perspectives ofthe subjugated, marginalized and silencedpopulations can introduce white doubleconsciousness. Just as colonized intellectu-als can view their colonized perspectivesfrom other perspectives, so too can whitesview themselves from other perspectives.When Fanon’s model is shared with whitesand colonizers, this new route toward self-knowledge connects with the teachings ofPaulo Freire. Freire writes,
[People] almost always bring withthem the marks of their origin:their prejudices and their deforma-tions…Those who authenticallycommit themselves to the peoplemust re-examine themselves con-stantly… Conversion requires aprofound rebirth…Only throughcomradeship with the oppressedcan the converts understand theircharacteristic ways of living andbehaving. (Freire, 1992, pp. 46-7)
When Fanon and Freire are read to-gether, they reveal that whites and coloniz-ers, as well as colonized intellectuals, canlearn to evaluate their outlooks and identi-ties from the perspectives of colonized orracially subjugated peoples. Freire’s com-radeship of whites and colonizers with theoppressed can be similar to a return ex-plained by Fanon (1967),
Sealed into that crushing object-hood, I turned beseechingly to oth-ers. Their attention was aliberation, running over my body
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suddenly abraded into nonbeing,endowing me once more with anagility that I had though I had lost,and by taking me outside theworld, restoring me to it. I stum-bled, and the movements, the atti-tudes, the glances of the other fixedme there… (p. 109).
In both cases, double consciousnesscan develop because one learns to viewoneself through the perspectives of others.When whites and colonizers learn to prac-tice and develop double consciousness, awhole new level of discussion can open be-tween the oppressors and the oppressed.The white or colonist conversion to camara-derie with people of color or colonized peo-ple can be like the whites’ or colonists’being taken outside the world and restoredto it, as Fanon explains. When whites andcolonists participate in this conversion andrestoration, then the burden that histori-cally falls to people of color can be sharedby all people. This sharing of the burden ofdouble consciousness changes the harmfulcondition of unilateral double conscious-ness to a healthy condition of multilateraldouble consciousness.
Fanon and Freire, again, help illumi-nate this evolution of double conscious-ness. Providing an example of the harm ofunilateral double consciousness, Fanon(1967) says,
To speak a language is to take on aworld, a culture. The Antilles whowants to be white [i.e. treated ashuman and adult] will be the whit-er as he gains greater mastery ofthe cultural tool that language is…Historically, it must be understoodthat the Negro wants to speakFrench because it is the key that canopen doors…[W]e find a quest forsubtleties, for refinements of lan-guage—so many further means ofproving to himself that he has mea-
sured up to the culture. (p. 38)
This adaptation, or assimilation, leadsto harmful unilateral double consciousnesswhen it includes developing a sense of infe-riority of one’s indigenous language andculture. It is then that one’s own people areneeded to take one outside the world andrestore one to the world, returning onefrom non-being. This harm of unilateraldouble consciousness would be preventedif the cultural exchanges were engagedequally by all parties, not just the people ofcolor or colonized people. Then, all partieswould be both hosts and guests, sharingthe challenges of measuring up to each oth-ers’ cultures. The status of white or Euro-pean cultures and languages would beequal with the status of African cultures orcultures of color when people of all groupslearn about each other and themselvesfrom each others’ perspectives. Such ex-change would be part of multilateral dou-ble consciousness, of seeing oneself andone’s culture through the perspectives ofothers. This equality is a form of whatFreire calls, “Dialogue.” Freire (2001)writes,
[T]he possibility of true dialogue,in which subjects in dialogue learnand grow by confronting their dif-ferences, becomes a coherent de-mand required by an assumedunfinishedness that reveals itself asethical. (p. 59)
When all parties confront their differ-ences by learning about how they are seenby each other, then they can become moreaware of their unfinishedness, of how muchthey can learn about themselves and eachother through such dialogue. This process,however, is severely compromised whenthe white or colonizing culture is positionedas superior to that of the colonized or peo-ple of color. Racial or cultural hierarchy cur-tails the possibility of healthy multilateral
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double consciousness and maintains the un-healthy unilateral double consciousness de-fined by DuBois and exemplified by Fanon.
Instead of unilateral double conscious-ness being a conflict the oppressed mustendure alone, multilateral double con-sciousness can become a healthy form ofcritical thinking with which all people canbecome more aware of their own assump-tions, intellectual conditionings, socialroles, positions and relationships with oth-ers. By developing a new discourse, a Freir-ian dialogue, where one’s sense of self isinformed by how one is seen by others,multilateral double consciousness can helpall people transition from hierarchical con-flict with each other toward comradeshipand cooperation.
Lilia Bartolome’s model of bordercrossing helps illuminate how seeing one-self through the perspectives of others canbe libratory for everyone involved. First,though, Bartolome (2004) says,
Members of the dominant culturetypically tend to border cross with-out compromising their position ofcultural and social privilege. Thistype of border crosser can travelthe world, study the “Other” in adetached and curious mannerwithout ever recognizing that cul-tural groups occupy different posi-tions of power and status and thatmany cultural perceptions andpractices result from such powerasymmetries. Often, these types ofideologically and politically“blind” border crossers assume“tourist” or “voyeur” perspectivesthat are very much tainted by theirunconscious deficit and White su-premacist ideologies. (p. 109)
These tourist border crossers do nothave double consciousness. They are nottaken outside the world and returned to it,as Fanon discusses. They do not re-examine
themselves through comradeship with theoppressed, as Freire suggests. Instead, they“study the other in a detached and curiousmanner without ever recognizing…posi-tions of power…” (Bartolome, 2004, p. 109).These whites may feel that they are helpingpeople of color, but they are not seeingthemselves as whites from perspectives ofpeople of color. That means all the burdensof double consciousness continue to fall topeople of color while whites are privilegedwith the delusion that they are adapting. Asan alternative to this conflation of whites’anti-racism with their white supremacy,Bartolome suggests empathetic bordercrossing. Bartolome juxtaposes tourist bor-der crossers with those who, she says,
crossed ethnic and socioeconomicborders and came to the realizationthat some cultural groups, throughno fault of their own, occupy posi-tions of low social status and aremarginalized and mistreated bymembers of higher-status groups.This realization enabled the indi-viduals to authentically empathizewith the cultural “Other” and takesome form of action to equalizeasymmetrical relations of powerand eradicate the stigmatized socialidentities imposed on subordinatedstudents. (Bartolome, 2004, p.10)
Empathic border crossers endeavor tosee from the perspectives of people of color,the oppressed or the colonized. They are notaloof as are the tourist border crossers, whoare self-indulgently certain that they are notracists so they exempt themselves from con-cern that they might be unknowingly partic-ipating in white supremacy. Transitioningfrom tourist to empathetic border crossingcan be similar to what Fanon describes asbeing taken outside the world and returnedto it. Also, such a transition can be similar toFreire’s explanation of re-examining oneselfthrough comradeship with the oppressed. It
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is a hard transition to do, though. It takes alot more than the language of political cor-rectness and it cannot be done simply withgood intentions, no matter how stronglyone feels those good intentions. Lisa Delpit(1995) explains,
Too often minority teachers’ voiceshave been hushed [by good-inten-tioned white teachers]: a certainpaternalism creeps into the speechof some of our liberal colleagues asthey explain that our children mustbe “given voice.” As difficult as it isfor our colleagues to hear our chil-dren’s existing voices, it is oftenequally difficult for them to hearour own… It is vitally importantthat non-minority educators real-ize that there is another voice, an-other reality… (p. 19)
This other reality can be found throughwhite double consciousness development.By seeing oneself as white through per-spectives of people of color, a new relation-ship can develop. Whites may start tonotice that they had been seen as patroniz-ing and silencing even though they had thebest intentions to be respectful and goodlisteners. If whites notice such a differencebetween their intentions and actions, thennew ways to conceptualize, negotiate andpursue equality and new forms of criticalthinking may develop through interracialcooperation and conversation.
A difficulty with empathetic bordercrossing, whether Bartolome’s, Fanon’s orFreire’s conception, is that it can make peo-ple, especially whites, feel extremely un-comfortable. Whites usually do not like tobe made to feel white. Janine Jones (2004)writes,
Race is something that others pos-sess. Whites are just “normal.”Whites’ inability to form the beliefthat they are white skews the na-
ture of the relationships that existbetween whites and blacks. It af-fects their ability to empathize be-cause they are unable to import aningredient essential to empathy: anappreciation of their own situation.
Goodwill whites’ desire not tosee themselves as whites may part-ly explain their desire not to seeblacks as blacks (p.70).
Tourist border crossers would want tohelp people of color as long as they did nothave see themselves as whites. Goodwilltourist border crossing whites might wantequality but they have to be comfortable.George Yancy (2004) writes,
Whiteness fails to see itself as alien,as seen, as recognized…Whitenessrefuses to risk finding itself in exile,in unfamiliar territory, an un-mapped space of uncertain-ty…[W]hiteness denies its ownpotential to be Other… (p. 13)
Empathetic border crossers are lessbothered by whether they are comfortableor uncomfortable with seeing themselves,and being seen, as white. They know thatthey are not really in exile when they areothers, anyway. As others, they can try toconnect with people of color on the terms ofthe people of color, as Fanon and Freire ex-plain. The inability to do that, the need tostay in the familiarity of whiteness that ev-eryone else has to pretend is invisible sowhites can stay comfortable, is exile. Ac-cording to Gary Howard (1999),
Too often as White educators wehave seen the problems [of racialinequalities and multicultural edu-cation] as “out there,” and we haveconceptualized our role as one of“helping minority students.” Sel-dom have we helped White educa-
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tors look deeply and critically atthe necessary changes and growthwe ourselves must achieve if weare to work effectively with the realissues of diversity (p. 3).
Howard draws on his own experiencesas a white person living in a black commu-nity during the riots of the 1960s to explainhow he becomes aware of his own white-ness (1999, p. 16). He discovers what itmeans for him to be white by learning howblack people help identify and explain whathis whiteness means. Howard (1999) writes,
It was only through living withpeople outside my particular fish-bowl [i.e. segregated white com-munity] that I was able to finallyperceive the true nature of my pre-viously invisible milieu. Throughtheir eyes I came to see the water ofWhite dominance… (p. 16).
Through black people’s eyes, Howardlearns how he has been privileged to seerace and racism as existing outside his ownbehavior, identity and responsibility. Blackperspectives enable Howard to see how it isthe invisibility of his own whiteness thatmakes race and racial problems appear tobe out there, outside of himself.
For Howard, learning about whitenessand white supremacy is an interpersonalprocess that depends on exploration withpeople of color. He needs to join and helpdevelop a community and discourse withinwhich people of diverse races and culturesexpose and change their own, and each oth-ers’, views and interactions together.Howard (1999) says,
All of us who occupy this land ofmulticultural commitment havehad to cross the borders of our ownparticular racial and culturalgroups to arrive in this new men-tal, emotional, and political
place…We had to learn from eachother, always open to unravel ever-deeper layers of ignorance, nar-rowness, and defensiveness re-garding our limited perspectivesand perceptions of truth. (p. 119)
Howard illuminates the possibility andpotential of white double consciousness.The writings of DuBois and Fanon revealthat the absence of such multilateral doubleconsciousness forces unilateral double con-sciousness for people of color and colo-nized people. DuBois defines doubleconsciousness as seeing oneself throughone’s own self-defined perspective and alsothrough the perspectives of others. Fanonshows that the problem of unilateral dou-ble consciousness extends far beyond thedynamics between black and white Ameri-cans. Fanon, Freire, Bartolome, Jones,Yancy, Delpit and Howard all help to showhow and why whites and colonists canlearn to see themselves through the per-spectives of people of color and colonizedpeople. Such white, or multilateral, doubleconsciousness helps whites engage in dia-logue so they can learn about themselvesand their sociopolitical positions throughthe perspectives of others.
Colorblindness focuses attention onhow people are all the same biologicallyand how race has no biological significanceor essence. However, multilateral doubleconsciousness would help reveal how racehas social significance and how the socialmeanings of race create differences be-tween people that maintain inequality, op-pression, alienation and illusions ofequality and justice. These differences, andthe insidious limitations of colorblindness,can be exposed, explored and discussed be-tween all people when we all learn to seeourselves through the perspectives of oth-ers.
404 MARC BLACK
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