The One Where Shawn Once Again Connects A Work of African-American Literature to the Domestic Ideal
WEB Du Bois, in his theory of double consciousness, noted the tendency of oppressed groups to view themselves through the lens of the oppressor. Notably, he did not suggest that this was merely an arcane psychological preoccupation but an organizing principle of many of the institutions in the United States that sought to uplift the newly emancipated Black American during what this course broadly labels as the Reconstruction period. According to Du Bois, organizations like Booker T. Washington's Tuskegee Institute, embraced stereotypes of Black Americans as lazy and servile by exhorting them to focus on manual trades that would be useful to White Southerners instead rather than aiding them in developing an effective civic society and agitating for equality. In addition, Du Bois attacked double consciousness as perpetuating an elite, the teachers and intellectuals of such institutions, who believed that they differed from the rest of their race in having truer knowledge of their com...