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W. E. B. Du Bois and the Articulation of the Black American 
Double Consciousness: Social Fact or Fiction?

by Anna Tyrina

Emile Durkheim wrote extensively on the 
implications of sociology in our society in The Rules of 
the Sociological Method. More specifically, he coined 
the term “social facts,” which consist of “manners of 
acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, 
which are invested with a coercive power by virtue 
of which they exercise control over him” (Durkheim 
51). This phenomenon should not be confused with 
organic phenomena (physical responses to outside 
stimuli, such as recoiling from injury) because those 
are internal to the individual, nor with psychological 
phenomena (such as emotions) for the same reason. 
Social facts are interactional obligations that coerce 
mannerisms from individuals due to moral standards 
that are upheld by groups of people to keep a cohesive 
community. These obligations may include roles such 
as father, citizen, teacher, and believer. Social facts 
have been one of the main perpetrators of slavery 
in American history (1619-1865). As explained in 
The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, social 
facts continue even today to wreak havoc on the 
development of African Americans in a largely white 
society, and the significance of this problematic 
development cannot be downplayed. Upon reading 
Du Bois’s work, “interpretation was made all the 
more inviting by the lack of a precise terminology 
in The Souls of Black Folk, where literary flourishes 
tend to overwhelm clear, analytical distinctions” 
(Allen 56). With the specific elucidation of social 
facts given to us by Emile Durkheim, we can begin 
to understand the momentous development of 
African Americans in the post-13th Amendment era 
leading up to the present moment. In this paper, I 
argue that we can use Durkheim’s conceptualization 
of social facts to understand the African American 
experience of double-consciousness as described by 
Du Bois. The social facts in relation to race at the 
time were: (1) Du Bois’s concept of African American 
double-consciousness and duality in the form of the 
problem of the “color line”; (2) the internalization 
of anti-black sentiment by black Americans; (3) Du 

Bois’s concept of the Veil and the separation of the 
white race from the black; and (4) Du Bois’s concept 
of “the Negro,” which was seen as a “problem” by 
the white society surrounding him. I will argue that 
Durkheim helps us understand not only the concepts 
that Du Bois introduces but also the nature of these 
concepts and how they affect both races, regardless 
of skin color. A comprehensive examination requires 
a deeper look at the four main social facts as well as 
an analysis of their effect on both races. 
      
Double Consciousness: The Duality of the African 
American    

Foremost, as W. E. B. Du Bois so aptly put it, 
“the problem of the twentieth century is the problem 
of the color-line—the relation of the darker to the 
lighter races of men…” (10). This first social fact 
with respect to race is crucial, as Du Bois says in 
The Souls, “the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born 
with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this 
American world—a world which yields him no true 
self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself 
through the revelation of the other world” (3). When 
one person looks at himself as if mirrored in the 
eyes of another individual, there arise problems of a 
social and psychological nature; this creates a sort of 
war in the soul, where two equal but opposite sides 
of a person are battling each other, and only sheer 
strength keeps the soul from ripping itself apart at the 
very seams of sociological existence. Du Bois terms 
this “double-consciousness.” Arnold Rampersad, 
in his The Art and Imagination of W. E. B. Du Bois, 
reveals his theory on the origin of this idea: 
     

The black possesses ‘no true self-consciousness’ 
but a ‘double consciousness,’ seeing himself only 
as perceived by whites through the veil. For this 
insight Du Bois drew from the psychology of his 
time. The term ‘soul’ was used synonymously 
with consciousness both by idealistic 
psychologists and by the religiously orthodox 



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Aisthesis      Volume 9,  201817

James McCosh, whose philosophy Du Bois has 
studied at Fisk. His favorite professor, William 
James, posited in 1890 that the structure of the 
brain allowed ‘one system [to] give rise to one 
consciousness, and those of another system to 
another simultaneously existing consciousness.’ 
The psychologist Oswald Kulpe wrote in 1893 
of ‘the phenomenon of double consciousness or 
the divided self… characterized by the existence 
of a more or less complete separation of two 
aggregates of conscious process… oftentimes of 
entirely opposite character. (74) 

      
The psychological component of this concept 
is important mainly as an illustration of the 
permanence of this social fact, showing that this 
has concrete repercussions for the human brain, a 
lasting impact on the psychological schematic of the 
people. Du Bois later explicates the problem that lies 
behind the double consciousness, pointing out that 
duality ineluctably leads to not only possessing two 
sides, but also two ideals, which “tempt the mind to 
pretense or to revolt, to hypocrisy or to radicalism” 
(148-149). Du Bois remembers from his childhood, 
observing other black boys as “their youth shrunk 
into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of 
the pale world about them and mocking distrust 
of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, 
why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in 
mine own house?” (2). He feels pity for these boys, 
whose strivings were not nearly as optimistic as his 
were. The abhorrent social fact of this duality, which 
is somehow unofficially required for the African 
American, “demands that blacks veil or mask their 
cultural selves whenever they cross or enter into the 
larger public discourse, engaging in a shared ethnic 
or cultural schizophrenia” (Gates 15). Du Bois also 
uses the double consciousness concept to point 
out that there is a contradiction between America’s 
constitutional ideals and the reality of a “society that 
is fundamentally structured by racism” (Owen 112). 
Examples include “the original justifications for 
chattel slavery, to the so-called Great Compromise 
of the Constitutional Convention of 1789, Jim Crow 
laws, federally endorsed housing segregation, and 
the reversals of affirmative action policies in the past 
three decades” (Owen 112). This use of the concept 
throws light on the disparity between the ideals 

and reality of our social order. Du Bois notes that 
African Americans are simultaneously welcomed 
into society, as reflected in Constitutional law, and 
alienated insofar as white supremacy does not let 
whites completely include African Americans in 
their society in both law and practice. Even though 
the legal system officially permits the inclusion 
of African Americans, they are still marginalized 
and feel alienated as a result of white supremacy, 
as “the tension between being black and being 
‘American’ is always present and deeply affects the 
self-consciousness of black Americans” (Owen 
112). Other scholars argue that instead of the black 
American self-consciousness being defined by 
the white American self-consciousness, the black 
American lacks a genuine self-consciousness. One 
such scholar is Ernest Allen Jr., who in his essay, 
“Ever Feeling One’s Twoness: ‘Double Ideals’ and 
‘Double Consciousness’ in The Souls of Black Folk,” 
argues that:

What Du Bois strictly meant by the phrase was 
the absence of true self-consciousness on the part 
of black Americans, the inability to recognize 
one’s black self other than through the mediated 
veil of the unacknowledging white gaze. In this 
instance, Du Bois’s frame of reference can be 
traced ultimately to Hegel’s phenomenology, 
where true self-consciousness—supposedly 
lacking in the Negro—was dependent upon the 
mutual recognition of human beings by one 
another. (52) 

       
Allen mainly argues that genuine self-consciousness 
can arise only from mutual recognition, and since 
black Americans are not on equal terms with whites, 
there is no mutual recognition and, consequently, no 
possibility of black true self-consciousness as well as 
no possibility of a separate and independent identity. 
He bases his argument on Hegel’s philosophy of 
reciprocal consciousness, or the idea that one 
consciousness defines the other and vice versa. These 
two consciousnesses are at sociological war with 
each other, and yet one consciousness’s metaphorical 
death will not solve the problem, as the “death” of 
the black consciousness does no good to white or 
black Americans, since “both master [dominant 
consciousness] and slave [submissive consciousness] 



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Aisthesis      Volume 9,  201818

come to realize that each is dependent (though in 
different ways) upon the other” (Owen 114-115). In 
juxtaposition, if one consciousness accepts defeat, the 
other will reign. This elucidation is exactly what Du 
Bois had meant to say, and Allen’s analysis fully aligns 
with Du Bois’s own message of the impossibility of a 
black true self-consciousness. As Du Bois describes 
this concept, Durkheim points out that social facts 
are coercive in nature, and avoidance of them is 
taken at one’s own risk of societal punishment. 

The Historic Coercion of Social Facts and Anti-
Black Sentiment

It is, therefore, of utmost importance to point out 
that social facts are in and of themselves not voluntary 
“...for it is not I who have prescribed these duties, I 
have received them through education” (Durkheim 
50). Therefore, it would be incorrect to say that 
slavery was prevalent only because individual people 
chose to own slaves, and it just happened to be a large 
number of people who individually decided to do so, 
since “no social fact can exist except where there is 
a well-defined social organisation” (Durkheim 52).  
Durkheim goes on to say that social facts do not have 
the individual as their substratum and therefore are 
external and collective; furthermore, social facts do 
not exclude anyone of any race, religion, or gender 
from their coercive power. It is also important to note 
that even religious leaders—people whom we hold to 
the highest moral example—helped perpetuate the 
social fact of African American duality at the time. 
Du Bois demonstrates this idea in relaying the story 
of Alexander Crummell, who in seeking to become 
a priest, received the response that “it is all very 
natural—it is even commendable; but the General 
Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church 
cannot admit a Negro…sometime, we trust—
sincerely trust—all such distinctions will fade away; 
but now the world is as it is” (162). This inopportune 
event further illustrates the impotence one felt at 
the absolute hegemony of the social fact of African 
American duality, where nobody was excluded from 
the coercion of social fact, not even a priest. 

The duality is also displayed by Du Bois in the 
context of African American history. Du Bois says 
that the history of the African American is the longing 
of the two selves to finally unite in a way so as not to 
lose either of the selves (3). The black American does 

not wish to Africanize America of Americanize the 
African part of his soul. He simply wishes for it to 
be possible for a man to at once be both a “Negro” 
and an American without outright social helotry, 
without being deprived of equal opportunities and 
without suffering for the act of demanding the rights 
of a free man. The twoness of being both black 
and American is only problematic when taken in 
relation to white supremacy, and getting rid of white 
supremacy does not dismantle the categories “black” 
and “American” or their cultural connotation; 
however, “what becomes possible is a sociocultural 
pluralism that does not embody the norms of 
whiteness as dominant” (Owen 117). Du Bois adds 
that historically the labors and achievements of 
single black men have come and disappeared before 
they were ever appreciated fully, and even here we 
come face-to-face with duality. A black artisan will 
struggle against the white-appointed lower wage 
jobs, but in the end will have no choice but to work 
for very low wages to support his family (Du Bois 4). 
The artisan is conflicted between wanting to produce 
something that reflects his unique personality and 
life experience, but also being forced to produce 
something that is also marketable to the primarily 
white society in which he lives (“Understanding W. 
E. B. Du Bois”). 

Furthermore, Du Bois also talks extensively 
about often being two steps behind the white man 
in terms of the knowledge needed for the thriving of 
his race. H. L. Mencken wrote capaciously about his 
views on this subject, alluding to the fact that even if 
the white race and the black race were to (from this 
point on) have the same education and to inhabit 
the same environment, the black race would always 
be somewhat behind in the sense of knowledge and 
civilization:
      

I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, 
supervision of environment and education, 
extending over many generations, it might be 
possible to make an appreciable improvement 
in the stock of the American negro, for example, 
but I must maintain that this enterprise would 
be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a 
high-caste white stock ready at hand, and it is 
inconceivable that the negro stock, however 
carefully it might be nurtured, could ever even 



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Aisthesis      Volume 9,  201819

remotely approach it. The educated negro 
of today is a failure, not because he meets 
insuperable difficulties in life, but because he 
is a negro. He is, in brief, a low-caste man, to 
the manner born, and he will remain inert and 
inefficient until fifty generations of him have 
lived in civilization. And even then, the superior 
white race will be fifty generations ahead of him. 
(Mencken 116)

      
Although Mencken’s word choice hints at 
derogation, and Du Bois’s voice is that of regret, 
they nonetheless relate a similar message. Moreover, 
this is not restricted to the whites’ view of black 
Americans, as there is another social fact in effect 
here: the internalization of anti-black sentiment 
from the outside world. There have been numerous 
studies conducted by the American Psychological 
Association showing that African Americans tend to 
fall victim to a concept known as “Stereotype Threat.” 
In the context of their study, this concept is described 
by APA as occurring when “negative stereotypes 
raise inhibiting doubts and high-pressure anxieties 
in a test-taker’s mind” (2006). This can be projected 
to the overall relations between African Americans 
and education, showing at least one of the major 
reasons why we don’t see as many African American 
achievers as Caucasian achievers.1 As APA notes, “At 
the very least, the findings undercut the tendency to 
lay the blame on unsupported genetic and cultural 
factors, such as whether African Americans ‘value’ 
education or girls can’t do math.” As Owen describes 
it, “how racial others see them—plays a significant 
role in the formation of black self-understanding. 
How the Other sees me shapes in central ways how I 
see myself ” (116). This internalization of anti-black 
sentiment is monumentally detrimental to the already 
complicated problem of double consciousness.
      
The Use of a Veil

The problem of double consciousness is also 
explained in the aforementioned metaphorical 

1 SAT Scores (1986-2014), National Center for Educa-
tion Statistics. This, of course, assumes that SAT scores 
are indicative of a person’s abilities and later success; oth-
er studies have shown that there is indeed a correlation 
between SAT scores and average salary in later adult life, 
salary being the determination of success, specifically for 
this argument. 

concept of the Veil. The Veil is used by Du Bois 
mainly for the establishment of the white audience as 
described by David S. Owen in his essay, “Whiteness 
in Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk.” He explains that 
by labeling the white race as the “other,” Du Bois 
reverses the typical perspective on matters of race:
      

This contrasts starkly with previous articulations 
of the black experience for white consumption 
in which authors such as Frederick Douglass 
and Booker T. Washington adopted what is 
called ‘assimilationist’ strategy in the sense 
that they sought to convince white readers that 
blacks had all of the cognitive, emotional, and 
spiritual experiences that whites do, and hence 
ought to be included in the (white) social world 
as full persons. Thus, in the dominant cultural 
discourse of the time (and of today), the Other 
would represent blacks and the self-same would 
represent whites, with the consequence that the 
perspective, interests, needs, and values of whites 
are normed. Du Bois, however, reverses this 
usual structure in order to create in his readers 
(and most especially in his white readers) a 
kind of cognitive dissonance, this generating 
the necessary discursive space for the credible 
expression of the black experience. (110) 

      
The reader should take note of Owen’s phrase, “a 
kind of cognitive dissonance.” This is especially 
important in understanding the separation between 
the two races. In order to create even the possibility 
that white society would take his message seriously, 
he had to establish a distinction between the two, 
knowing fully that this would not sit well with a lot 
of individuals in his white audience, to whom he 
replies that even if they do not agree with him “at the 
same time some revelation of how the world looks to 
me cannot easily escape him [i.e. the reader]” (Owen 
109). Another large part of the significance of the 
Veil is its instrumental feat in describing the barrier 
between black and white experience. The importance 
is described in the “thought of the older South—
the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere 
between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid,2 
and called it a Negro—clownish, simple creature, 

2 Latin: a third thing that is indefinite and undefined but is 
related to two definite or known things. 



W. E. B. Du Bois and the Articulation of the Black American Double Consciousness

Aisthesis      Volume 9,  201820

at times even lovable within its limitations, but 
straightly foreordained to walk within the Veil” (Du 
Bois 67). The Veil is a metaphorical separation of 
the higher class (white) from the lower class (black), 
from which the slave was forced to look at himself 
through the eyes of another (the recurrent concept 
of double-consciousness). Du Bois shows us the 
concept of the Veil through numerous examples in 
the text. In “Of the Meaning of Progress,” Du Bois 
describes the time he dined at the commissioner’s 
house of the school he taught at in Tennessee. He 
says, “but even then, fell the awful shadow of the 
Veil, for they ate first, then I—alone” (47). Even 
though he had been treated with respect in receiving 
an invitation to dine at the commissioner’s house, 
the respect was not meaningful, since there was no 
substance to it. As Owen describes this incident, “the 
respect he receives because of his status as a teacher 
is a hollow form of respect, a respect in form only” 
(119). The hollowness of the respect has to do with 
the constraints placed on the situation, mainly the 
blind following of social facts in respect to race, the 
construal of a primarily white society’s norms. Du 
Bois also understands that the incident is an example 
of how the Veil hangs between black Americans 
and opportunity, despite all their efforts to better 
themselves. However, he does not feel contempt for 
all the people beyond the veil “for the words I longed 
for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, 
not mine” (2). The connotational meaning of the Veil 
should also not escape notice, for when we think 
about what it means to wear a veil, a different sort 
of picture appears. A veil, as a material possession, 
is something used to cover up, whether a bride’s face 
in a marriage ceremony or, more generally, women 
in Muslim culture (Owen 120). The Veil is used to 
hide something from public view or perception and, 
when understood in this way, the Veil is used as a 
primary means of covering something up in public or 
removing a shameful part of our society from view. 
In this sense, the Veil is whiteness, the deciding factor 
of what should and should not be visible among 
mankind (dehumanizing those that fit under the 
Veil); in other words, “the interests, needs and values 
of blacks are enshrouded and removed from public 
notice, consideration and valuing” (Owen 120). The 
Veil is an effect of the long-standing suppression of 
the black race for means of psychological and material 

gain. Lastly, Owen points out that Du Bois uses the 
concept of the Veil because he cannot outwardly call 
whiteness by its name or risk the chance of his white 
audience failing to see the whiteness for what it was, 
psycho-socially defending their position and status 
in their own society. However, in a way, the Veil is 
also detrimental to the whites, as the Veil functions 
to prevent whites from recognizing the norming of 
their own skin color. Put more blandly, since black 
Americans are covered up beyond the Veil, the only 
perspective available to whites is the perspective they 
have always had: of complete and unconditional 
white supremacy. As Owen says, “whiteness itself 
becomes invisible” (121). 
      
“The Negro” as a “Problem”

An additional social fact presented by Du 
Bois was the view of the black American as a sort 
of “problem” by the outside world. He begins his 
monumental work in relaying that
      

Between me and the other world there is ever 
an unasked question: unasked by some through 
feelings of delicacy; by others through the 
difficulty of rightly framing it. All nevertheless, 
flutter round it. They approach me in a half-
hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or 
compassionately, and then, instead of saying 
directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they 
say, I know an excellent colored man in my 
town; or I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not 
these Southern outrages make your blood boil? 
At these I smile, or am interested, or reduce the 
boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. 
To the real question, How does it feel to be a 
problem? I answer seldom a word. (1-2) 

The anfractuous form of this excerpt points at the 
very marrow of Du Bois’s message. The “other 
world” Du Bois mentions is the white society that 
Du Bois dare not mention outright because of the 
possible dismissal of his views by the white audience 
(as discussed previously). By argutely spotlighting 
the questioner’s perspective as white, he marks the 
perspective of the reader as white, thereby drawing 
attention to the questioner and not Du Bois (Owen 
109). In this manner, Du Bois yet again shows the 
degree to which white and black Americans have 



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Aisthesis      Volume 9,  201821

completely different social orders within society. Du 
Bois deracinates the notion that the white voice is 
the dominant one, by defining the actual problem: 
not the fact that these people are black, but the fact 
that these people lack a voice, a cultural expression. 
Du Bois does not answer the question posited to him 
precisely because he rejects the whole presumption 
of the question: that black people are a problem, for 
answering the question would mean acceptance of it. 
By rejecting the assumption, he calls attention to the 
“normalized racial presuppositions that frame the 
question” (Owen 110). The problem then becomes 
not being a problem but being seen as a problem. 
Since the statement of the problem emphasizes 
the white perspective, the black perspective is 
marginalized and excluded, and “thus, the problem 
is not of blacks, but of whites” (Owen 110). Du Bois 
suggests that only when framed by the norming of 
whites, does the question make sense, and since we 
have explored the norming quite fully, the question 
itself no longer makes sense, “for it is not blacks that 
are the problem but the norming of whiteness itself 
that is” (Owen 110). Even so, Du Bois captivates 
us with the depiction of the forgotten black voice: 
the Sorrow Songs of African American heritage. 
The Sorrow Songs are placed strategically at the 
beginning of every chapter of the Souls, and it is only 
at the denouement that everything comes together 
as if a chiliad of threads forming an elegant, adorned 
abaya. In Chapter XIV, the last chapter, he mourns 
the loss of the Sorrow Songs, allegorizing them to 
the disappearance of the black voice, and equates his 
emotions to homesickness. 

Conclusion
Du Bois paints an endless masterpiece of 

historic movements and strivings attempted by black 
Americans to find the comforts of the soul they 
yearned for. Every time a new social current swept 
society in a new direction, there was a social uprising 
that made the black man come a little closer to the 
goal of freedom, for “few men ever worshipped 
Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as 
did the American Negro for two centuries” (4). 
Nonetheless, social facts can change due to social 
currents or “facts which do not present themselves 
in this already crystallized form, but which also 
possess the same objectivity and ascendancy over the 

individual” (Durkheim 52).  As Du Bois describes, 
every social current was used to gain a small step 
in the right direction. The 13th Amendment was 
followed by unspeakable terrors of the KKK, making 
the country fraught with chaos. The remaining 
ignorance of white people battling their guilt, 
albeit unsuccessfully, made the newly freed people 
hesitant to join a society that had treated them 
appallingly for so long. The treatment that the white 
population had subjected the black population to 
was hard to acquiesce for both races, but especially 
for black Americans. This was followed by the 15th 
Amendment, which granted African Americans the 
right to vote, followed by the Revolution of 1876.3 It 
is important to note here that Du Bois saw the next 
movement that arose as somewhat different from 
the previous ones in that it strove towards “book-
learning,” an attempt by a black man to learn the 
white man’s letters, so to speak. According to Du Bois, 
it was a toil like no other the race had experienced 
before, but it was obvious to those around the black 
man that here was a race greedy for knowledge but 
in no way precocious due to the history of emotional 
and intellectual struggle. Du Bois stresses that even 
though this long journey was dim and overbearing, 
it gave his people a time for contemplation, and even 
though the black man saw himself “darkly, as through 
a veil,” he also “saw in himself a faint revelation of 
his power, of his mission” (6). He further notes that 
the black man sees himself as the struggling race he 
embodies; a struggle not only of the intellect, but 
of the black family, branded by bastardry, of the 
social position of the black man within society, for 
“a people thus handicapped ought not to be asked 
to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all 
its time and thought to its own social problems” (7). 
The four social facts are not particularly of help here 
either, deterring the black man’s progress in a white 
man’s society. Returning to the original premise of 

3 What Du Bois alludes to here is the presidential election 
of 1876, which controversially resulted in the underdog 
Rutherford B. Hayes defeating the more popular Samuel F. 
Tilden, thanks to a congressional compromise referred to 
as the Compromise of 1877. As part of this compromise, 
the North would remove federal troops from the South, 
and Reconstruction would officially end. This meant that 
the South could go back to discriminating against black 
Americans (now freedmen and no longer under slav-
ery).  



W. E. B. Du Bois and the Articulation of the Black American Double Consciousness

Aisthesis      Volume 9,  2018

this work, it needs to be stated plainly that the double 
consciousness that the black American experiences 
is not fiction, but fact.

Optimistically, Du Bois provides a solution as 
to how the situation can change: “it is not enough 
for the Negroes to declare that color-prejudice is the 
sole cause of their social condition, nor for the white 
South to reply that their social condition is the main 
cause of prejudice. They both act as reciprocal cause 
and effect, and a change in neither alone will bring 
the desired effect. Both must change, or neither can 
improve to any great extent” (Du Bois 137-138). In 
effect, what he says is that it’s not enough to have 
social currents sway society one way or another, and 
it is also not enough for one side to change because 
this will not make a difference. The social facts have 
to change. It needs to become a priority to have 
“the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and 
talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt 
for other races, but rather in large conformity to the 
greater ideals of the American Republic, in order 
that someday on American soil two world-races may 
give each to each those characteristics both so sadly 
lack” (8-9). 

Works Cited 
Adler, John. “Finding Precedent: Hayes vs. Tilden, 

the Electoral College Controversy of 1876-1877.” 
Harper’s Weekly, 2001, elections.harpweek.com/
controversy.htm 

Allen, Ernest, Jr. “Ever Feeling One’s Twoness: 
‘Double Ideals’ and ‘Double Consciousness’ in 
The Souls of Black Folk.” Contributions in Black 
Studies, vol. 9, article 5, 1992.

Du Bois, W. E. B. The Souls of Black Folk. Edited by 
Henry Louis Gates, Bantam Classics, 2005. 

Durkheim, Emile. The Rules of the Sociological 
Method. Edited by Steven Lukes, translated by W. 
D Halls, Free Press, 1982, pp. 50-59.

Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. “Introduction: Darkly, as 
Through a Veil.” The Souls of Black Folk, by W. E. 
B. Du Bois, 2005, Bantam Classics. 

Owen, David S. “Whiteness in Du Bois’s The Souls 
of Black Folk.” Philosophia Africana, vol. 10, no.  
2, August 2007.

Rampersad, Arnold. The Art and Imagination of W. 
E. B. Du Bois. Harvard UP, 1976.

Rives, La Monte Robert, and H. L. Mencken. Men 
Versus the Man: A Correspondence Between 
Robert Rives La Monte, Socialist, and H.L. 
Mencken, Individualist. Holt, 1910. 

“Stereotype Threat Widens Achievement Gap.” 
American Psychological Association, 15 July 2006, 
http://www.apa.org/research/action/stereotype.
aspx. 

“13th Amendment to the U.S Constitution.” Library 
of Congress, 2015, www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/
ourdocs/13thamendment.html

“Understanding W. E. B. Du Bois’ Concept of Double 
Consciousness.” Kristen Does Theory. University 
of Mary Washington Blogs, 2012. 

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