Striving Of The Negro People Analysis

The identity of a slave had been defined by the white men who owned them, they were nothing but property. After the emancipation, this group of ex-slaves had to decide how they would identify and label themselves in their “new world”. The power to reconquer themselves and to change the definition of what being black seemed to be possible, but the continuous oppression of black men and woman only increased their struggle to create a new identity. W.E.B Du Bois writes about the struggle of not being able to find a coherent identity in his essay Striving of the Negro People, Du Bois talked about how every black child has a moment in which they began to understand they were different and did not have one simple identity like many white children.
Before his W.E.B Du Bois was demonstrated where society placed him, he and many young black children lived in a world with possibility, a world without a veil. There is no confusion and no feeling of being less of a person that a white child. The struggle of balancing and finding who you truly do not exist, a child does not feel a personal division of their identity. Yet when the black child discovers that their lives and stories do indeed live behind a veil, and therefore are invisible they both gain and suffer from this discovery. These children are now introduced to an internal struggle of having to piece together their identity. Their newly discovery of their double consciousness causes them to juggle their African and American identities; these children can see their heritage and the society in which they live in, but while they desire to be able to live in peace with a solo identity it is nearly impossible to form a simple and single
The definition coined by W.E.B. Du Bois to describe this sensation was “Double Consciousness”, and while it gave a name to the feeling, it also created the terms “second sight” and “veil”. The formation of the black identity was one with internal dilemmas, but just like the community did for years before, it was able to pass through the pain and create a definition for what it meant to be