Leroi Jones And Du Bois: An Analysis

All African-American studies express to the broader meaning of being an African- American existing in America. In the antebellum and postbellum periods in the United States, both Leroi Jones and Du Bois express the history of being black and American under slavery, justice and salvation to freedom. They both speak of the oppression of the black people in different narrative forms.
Leroi Jones, in his book Blues People, discusses how the Africans were treated in the America. Before the emancipation in 1865, they suffered from all kinds of sorrowful experiences and were not treated as humans. Besides, the fact is that these Africans did not come to the United States by free will. After the Emancipation, they were still seen as former slaves
By supporting his claim with his personal story of which his card was refused by white girl because he was a black guy, it shows that the Negros were the victims of racism and injustice. For those who were forced to come to America, Africa was where they belonged to and yet, the American society didn’t allow them to use their own language, and prohibited them from practicing the African culture in all forms to ensure that it would disappear among their progeny generations. Even after they were granted newly freedmen, they were never able to obtain real freedom, wealth, or well-paid job. Although they were no longer chained by their white slave masters, due to color line, the Negros still remained segregated in the American
As he explains, it refers to the experience of “looking at one’s self through the eyes of others” (Du Bois 1903:2). This specifically relates to the experience of African-Americans, of their sensation and complex feelings of two-ness: being blacks and Americans. A black cannot perceive his own self from his perspective but from how he is seen by the whites. Despite the hope for these identities could coexist peacefully, since the Negros were living in the American society where they were treated unequally, the African-Americans struggled to reconcile the two identities, two cultures that composed them. As a result, their behaviors and self-images would be shaped by the whites’