{"id":20318,"date":"2020-12-14T11:11:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-14T15:11:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=20318"},"modified":"2020-12-16T18:29:54","modified_gmt":"2020-12-16T22:29:54","slug":"dueling-consciousness","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/dueling-consciousness\/","title":{"rendered":"Dueling Consciousness: Ibram X. Kendi’s Identities"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What is a dueling consciousness? How did dueling consciousness affect Ibram X. Kendi in How to Be an Antiracist<\/em>?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dueling consciousness is the feeling that you see yourself in two ways. You have your own view of yourself and you have the way that others see you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Keep reading to understand what dueling consciousness is and how it affected Kendi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Dueling Consciousness<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Many people hold beliefs that fall into more than one of these schools of thought. People of color tend to hold both antiracist and assimilationist views and experience \u201cdueling consciousness\u201d\u2014the sensation of looking at themselves from two angles: how they view themselves and how others view them.<\/strong> Antiracism suggests there\u2019s nothing wrong with Black people and they\u2019re perfectly capable of achieving success. But assimilation suggests that when Black people aren\u2019t successful by White standards, it\u2019s due to negative behaviors characteristic of the entire racial group. Consequently, Black people experiencing dueling consciousness are torn between the belief in their own inherent equality and the belief that Black people have only themselves to blame for the disproportional success of Whites in society. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ibram experienced this dueling consciousness throughout his formative years. He was proud of being Black (an antiracist belief), but at the same time believed that Black people were responsible for their own problems\u2014if Black students would just try harder (act more like White people and assimilate), they would be getting the same grades as White students. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Academic Achievement<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Ibram\u2019s grades were low throughout much of high school, and because it was the nineties and he was a Black teenager, people put a lot of pressure on him. They told him that his bad behavior reflected badly on the entire Black race.<\/strong> His grandparents\u2019 and parents\u2019 generations were fond of using Martin Luther King Jr. to shame individuals by saying that they were throwing away everything he\u2019d fought for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Part of the reason Ibram was checked out in the first place was racism\u2014he\u2019d gone to overcrowded schools <\/strong>(often the result of racist school-zoning policies) and regularly experienced racist abuse.<\/strong> However, he, like every Black person, was expected to overcome all this, and if he couldn\u2019t, it was his<\/em> fault. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Southern Culture<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In 1997, Ibram and his family moved to a predominantly White neighborhood in Manassas, Virginia. The first night Ibram was there, he was worried the KKK would show up because he\u2019d heard plenty about Black people being abused in the South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Ibram was fifteen, he believed in multiculturalism. He knew his own culture was legitimate. However, that didn\u2019t stop him from looking down on the cultures of Southerners.<\/strong> He thought their music was terrible, they couldn\u2019t dress, and their basketball players were \u201cscrubs.\u201d He was arrogant, and this kept potential friends at a distance. Furthermore, he thinks his cultural elitism probably cost him a spot on the junior-varsity basketball team.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ibram didn\u2019t have the whole picture. He knew that generally looking down on a culture was wrong\u2014he would never say Black people were culturally inferior. He would, however, judge specific Black cultures, and it took him two years to begin to respect the culture of North Virginia and make friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What is a dueling consciousness? How did dueling consciousness affect Ibram X. Kendi in How to Be an Antiracist? Dueling consciousness is the feeling that you see yourself in two ways. You have your own view of yourself and you have the way that others see you. Keep reading to understand what dueling consciousness is and how it affected Kendi.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":7879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,43,24],"tags":[165],"class_list":["post-20318","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-psychology","category-self-improvement","category-society","tag-how-to-be-an-antiracist","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nDueling Consciousness: Ibram X. 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