Double Consciences And The Veil Analysis

This essay compares the articles “Reinventing the Veil” by Leila Ahmed and “Why aren’t woman advancing at the Workplace” by Jessica Nordell. Both articles display oppression of woman due to stereotypes and the culture effecting environment phenomenon. “Reinventing the veil” is an article that shares an insight into the author’s perspective on hijabs and a brief discussion on hijabs over time and what they represent to Muslim woman. The article “Why woman aren’t advancing at workplace” attempts to look at how transgendered people might serve as a medium, to understand the glass ceiling effect and the obstacles woman face at the workplace. These articles share many similarities and will be discussed in this essay. *

Judgement causes people to wear masks. In The Minister’s Black Veil by Nathaniel Hawthorne, people in the community judge Mr. Hooper for wearing a veil. Since he lives in a Puritan community everyone knew everything about each other, and if anyone misbehaved everyone would know about it. Hawthorne makes this evident in the first paragraph when he describes the way the town reacted when he wore the veil to a funeral sermon. In his sermon Hooper states that God is always watching, but the truth is that the townspeople are always watching and judging their peers. ” As he entered the church people became disturbed. He wanted to see how people would react when he did something he normally wouldn’t do. “The next day, the whole village of Milford talked of little else than Parson Hooper's black veil. That, and the mystery concealed behind it, supplied a topic for discussion between acquaintances meeting in the street, and good women gossiping at their open windows. It was the first item of news that the tavern-keeper told to his guests. The children babbled of it on their way to school. One imitative little imp covered his face with an old black handkerchief, thereby so affrighting his playmates that the panic seized himself, and he well-nigh lost his wits by his own waggery.” Hoopers appearance leads the town to believe their own interpretations of why he chose to wear the black veil.

In the analysis of the abundance of wonderful leaders who made a difference in the African American community since emancipation, W.E.B Du Bois made a special impact to advance the world. From founding the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, to his influential book The Souls of Black Folk, he always found an accurate yet abstract way of verbalizing the strives of African Americans as well as making platforms for them to be known. Although he had less power than most of the bigger named African American leaders of his time, W.E.B Dubois’ overweighing strengths verses weaknesses, accurate and creative analogies, leadership style, and the successful foundations he stood for demonstrates his ability to be both realistic and accurate in his assessment since emancipation.

The veil can be compared to “rose-colored glasses” that provide optimism for black people who choose not to see their oppression. Yet at the same time, it harms them by encouraging black people to ignore the circumstances in which they live. Double consciousness is the belief that the African American in the United States lives with two conflicting identities that cannot be entirely merged together. The first conflicting identity is the black identity and it is the most important to the black experience. This is something that every black person has and no other race can identify with. The second conflicting identity is the American identity, which is only alive because of the circumstances of slavery. This is how black people are able to understand what life is like for people that are within and outside of their group. However, white people could never understand the black experience. Du Bois mentioned, “The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card,---refused it peremptorily, with a glance…”. At that very moment, he realized that he was not accepted naturally by the outside race. He was fine with having a different perspective and he did not

Born February 23rd 1868 DuBois spent his life caught between two extremely unsettling times in the history of African-American culture. Living in the time after slavery but before the boom of the civil rights movement in the 1960’s Debois situated himself in such way that he was able to bring awareness about the unique experience felt by many African Americans during this time period.As an African American writer Sociologist, Civil Right Activist and a Pan -Africanist Dubois communicates the reality of his and his people’s struggle in the his paper Double-Consciousness and the Veil. He argues that “ there is a sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others”(Dubois,1903,pp.164). Defining what he would essentially coin as the powerlessness felt by many African Americans when they must decide subjectively and objectively weather to be African or American in a given situation. He prefaces this by asking the question what does it mean to

Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man addresses double consciousness by directly referring to this concept, as well as W.E.B. DuBois’s concept of the veil placed over African Americans. Throughout the novel, the Invisible Man believes that his whole existence solely depends on recognition and approval of white people, which stems from him being taught to view whites as superior. The Invisible Man strives to correspond to the immediate expectations of the dominate race, but he is unable to merge his internal concept of identity with his socially imposed role as a black man. The novel is full of trickster figures, signifying, and the Invisible Man trying to find his own identity in a reality of whiteness. Specifically, Ellison’s employment of trickster

In “Gender Socialization and Identity Theory” by Michael J. Carter, he asserts gender identity originates with the family. The writer maintains that families are the agents of identity socialization. Carter argues that beginning with infancy children are taught how they are expected to socialize primarily by their families, simply due to the continuous contact with one another, boys are dressed in blue while girls are dressed in pink. The author plainly elucidates children gain knowledge of homophily through playmates by self-segregation into homogeneous groups. Through his psychoanalytic theory the writer respectfully expounds males identify with masculinity by not behaving as their female caretakers act. Mr. Carter based

What Du Bois meant by the “double consciousness” of African Americans is that they look at themselves through the eyes of others. “This double consciousness, this sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity” African Americans know that the rest of America see them as a lowly and controversial group of people because they were once viewed as a piece of property and not a human being. Now that they are freedmen, America doesn’t know what to think about them.

Nevertheless, actually, many people have a strong racial prejudice. Anthony Walton reveals it in his work My Secret Life as a Black Man. He discusses the right of individual to personal identity and portrays an irreconcilable conflict between an individual's desire for authenticity and racial stereotyping and prejudices in society. Unfortunately, the power of stereotypes is manifested in all aspects of our life. Walton wants to distance himself from the society that tries to shape his views, attitudes and behavioral norms. He talks about “a secret life” because his inner world with its true thoughts, feelings and emotions is deeply hidden. Walton states that people are enable “to perceive others in any fashion other than as stereotypes” (n.d., p. 131). He depicts society splitting into two opposing parts, black and white; and he, like a restless wanderer, belongs to none of these groups. He describes, “When white strangers gazed upon me, they saw only what their culture and society had constructed and coded as a “black man.” And a six-foot, two-hundred-fifty pound one at that – a threat to doormen, security guards, and cabdrivers; someone suspicious, dangerous, but irrelevant” (n.d., p. 131). On the other hand, he is not “black enough” to be accepted by a black

Double consciousness is a term coined by W.E.B. DuBois in his The Souls of Black Folk. He describes it as, “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”(2). The theory of double consciousness is the idea that the African American must navigate the voyages of life from within a form of “two-ness” (2), because he is both man, and black.

The main character in “The Minister’s Black Veil”, Mr. Hooper represents how everyone carries a sin with them but some choose to acknowledge it, while others choose to hide them.

Whether through art or language, representations of identity ensue from processes that communicate what manners of being are considered culturally valid within a society. The expression of these expected conditions of existence depends on normative forms of social conditioning, and it is from within this fixed set of self-reproducing actions that hegemonic apparatuses possess power over people. Owing to an ideological foundation situated among various terms pioneered by Gloria Anzaldúa in her piece titled Borderlands/La Frontera, José Esteban Muñoz develops an ability to comprehend how the performance of intersubjective queerness disturbs essences of normativity, and comforts those who disidentify with mainstream perception. The following concepts

Double consciousness is a theory first mentioned by W.E.B. Du Bois in his book “The Souls of Black Folk” which primarily focuses on the idea of double consciousness and analysis of “Black folk” in America during Jim Crow laws. Double consciousness was the theory of “a source of inward “twoness” putatively experienced by African-Americans because of their racialized oppression and disvaluation in a white-dominated society.”(Pittman). Jim Crow laws--legalized segregation--kept African Americans from expressing their identity as Americans proudly when they were treated lesser than their white counterparts. In double consciousness many African Americans could not be able to choose one identity but rather a split of identities. African Americans

Sedgwick states that the relationship amid of sex and sexual orientation can be contrasted with the relationship in the middle of race and class. They are connected however ought to be mapped on various different points in which sex and gender are connected yet not related toward each other in the quote, “it was long, painful realization, not that all oppressions are congruent, but that was first great heuristic breakthrough of socialist-feminist though and of the thought of woman of color” (Sedgwick, 2475). What Sedgwick was explaining in this quote was that the assortment of sexuality has a few connections to sex yet there are numerous more measurements to sexuality which have nothing to do with sex such as power, positions and sexual acts.

Many people can agree with the fact that society can be a controlling, manipulative beast. It’s hand persistently reaches out and drags unsuspecting victims into depths known as conformity. Over time, many people develop masks of their own to hide from this beast and to be seen as a typical and average person. But by doing this, these people hide parts of themselves from others, making themselves seem one-dimensional. They hide behind these masks they form, and conceal themselves from the terrifying, outside world. Duality is then manifested from this side hidden from society, and for good or for bad, people learn these hidden aspects of themselves. Although others may not yet know of these hidden sides of subjects, one