W.E.B. DuBois and Dual Consciousness For Teachers of Color
In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. DuBois posits:
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.
DuBois left nuggets for decades on end, many of them still consumable to present-day. Conversations around codeswitching and multiculturalism come full circle for people of color in this country. In order to survive the schooling system in this country, they must work tirelessly to hold onto their home cultures and snap back into what the schooling process requires. In college, we’re asked to let our guards down, but the seduction of looser schedules and the ivory tower aesthetic only serve to remind so many of us that we have no stake in the institutions we hope will recognize our credentials.
What’s more, a handful of us are then allowed to become the teachers charged with carrying this discordant ideology forward, usually to students who look like us and share similar cultures, a generation removed.
People often ask, “What, to America, is a teacher of color?” There have been plenty of studies in the last few years suggesting a level of desire for recruiting teachers of color. So far, I have respected the efforts of local and national W.E.B. DuBois and Dual Consciousness For Teachers of Color | The Jose Vilson: