The Souls of Military Folks

You are about to read a paper I submitted for a Poltiical Science class I took last year at the University of Washington. The class was American Political Thought: 1865-Present, and was a survey of the political/economical/social thinking of America’s foremost leaders. In this paper, I wrote about W.E.B. Du Bois “The Souls of Black Folk”, and Du Bois’ emphasis of double consciousness for African Americans, which is a term he used to discuss how African Americans see themselves in a white world. I ran with this idea and wrote about how today’s military has developed its own double consciousness. If we continue on the present track of having our troops deploy to combat two, three, four, five, even six times, we are creating a small minority of Americans who will not be like you or I. All I can say to the stupidity of the Iraq war is – What if it was your child? Your son or daughter? With less than 2 million Americans (the writer included) having served in Iraq, and more than 350 million people in this country, shouldn’t more of a burden be placed on others? Hasn’t our military done enough? Why don’t we save some money (like $10 billion a month), bring them home, let them have more than a year to spend with their families before redeploying them back, and start the rebuilding and restructuring our military needs so that when the next big war happens (it hasn’t yet,) they will be able to fight effectively and adequately. “We go to war with the Army we have” – Donald Rumsfeld. To that, I say “No, we go to war with the very best or we don’t go at all.”

The military copes with the struggles involved with fighting its nation’s wars. A soldier can deploy to Iraq for a year, suffer through hardships beyond comprehension, and return home, only to be asked a most daunting question: “What was it like over there?” Or a civilian will come up to the airman and say, “I support the troops and I appreciate everything you did for America.” Or they will inform the Marine or sailor that they knew someone who fought in Iraq, and it really makes them mad that the government would start a war like that. “At these, I smile, or am interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require.” (Du Bois, 2)

To the real question, what does the service member say back to these innocent individuals about the Iraq problem? “I answer seldom a word.” (Du Bois, 2)

Like the military, which represents a minority of the U.S. population and has been subjected to constant war for the past six years, African Americans have been trying to figure out how to stop being a problem. W.E.B. Du Bois encapsulated the problems associated with African Americans in his classic The Souls of Black Folk. In the book, he brought to light the major issues facing the nation at that time, which was that the problem of the 20^th century would be the color line. But how could he make such a prescient statement? He was an African American himself who lived within the veil. The collection of essays foresaw how white America’s innocence and failure to realize its own subjectivity allowed them to maintain the status quo and oppress those who were different. 

Du Bois said that two major social ideas associated with the veil are double-consciousness and second-sight. Before the military service member learned about the sorrows connected to double-consciousness and second-sight, African Americans embodied the two social ideas.

Double-consciousness is a “…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.” (Du Bois, 3)

Du Bois’ awareness of his double-consciousness provided a gift of knowledge that many of his fellow countrymen did not have. For instance, by looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, he could feel his “…two-ness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings.” (Du Bois, 3)

 Because of his strength to fight through the veil, the two warring ideals were kept from being torn asunder. He did not let the strife get to him like it did to others. “With other black boys, the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or…silent hatred of the pale world about them…or beat unavailing palms against the stone…” (Du Bois, 3 )

Unfortunately, enlightenment of one’s double-consciousness brought a curse. Once one leaves the complacent atmosphere of blissful ignorance, all the problems of the world rush into one’s mind, and for Du Bois, especially, it mentally weighed him down. He saw an American government promise his people emancipation, yet fail to actually provide it in anything more than words. “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.” (Du Bois, 6)

Another gift provided by double-consciousness is second-sight. Once an African American became conscious that the white world did not view them as a doctor, or a teacher, or a writer, but as a black man or woman, a new stream of thinking was created. This gift of thought would now take in the white person’s stereotypes of what an African American was or should be.  Then, the African American would now manifest a second-guessing syndrome where he or she would constantly wonder what would be the right thing to say. Du Bois put it best when he wrote, “…two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” (Du Bois, 3)

The revelations of double-consciousness and second-sight occurred to Du Bois at a relatively young age. Du Bois wrote about his experience of giving out visiting cards to a young girl, who refused to accept it peremptorily. This was his first awakening to the realization that he was different from others; this is where he discovered his second sight. He discovered the veil cast down upon him by society, limiting his view of himself and how others see him in the world. He… “had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through…” (Du Bois, 2)

To beat the curses of institutionalized racism, Du Bois, like many African Americans, limited the power of the veil by performing activities better than the white children did. “The sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads.” (Du Bois, 2)

But the veil had been in place for more than 300 years, so what was the African American to do?   Economic vitality was being sold as the key to prosperity by the whites, but this did not hold much practicality for blacks. The South had become a region of serfdom: African American sharecroppers worked for little to no wages for rich, white landowners. As the nation as a whole became richer because of the Industrial Age, African Americans, in a race to the bottom, were becoming consistently poorer.  “He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings…To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” (Du Bois,

 

So what was the African American to do? For Du Bois, that answer was simple: “…human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; 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 some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack.” (Du Bois, 11)

His desire for integration would require whites to realize their own subjectivity and understand that they could have been born African Americans. Without these stipulations happening, Americans would not move beyond their problematic history.

White America has best been known as the historically privileged. They have espoused that America is built up on liberty, justice and the pursuit of happiness, in the Declaration of Independence, yet, according to Du Bois, because of slavery, have yet to give those opportunities to all of its citizens.  “Freedom, too, the long-sought, we still seek, – the freedom of life and limb, the freedom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire. Work, culture, liberty – all these we need…” (Du Bois, 11)

Without true freedom and racial equality, African Americans will continue to stay in their role as being historically oppressed. White America must change the way it sees itself as being the ideal, and evolve from being historically privileged to developing a more legitimate sense of historical consciousness. They must integrate the African American experience into the social fabric of America’s history. The white way is not the only way. Every race, culture, social group in America has a voice, a message for the world, and each manifests itself differently. For Du Bois, the message of the African American is one of hope dissolved in a world of despair. “…but for fresh young souls who have not known the night and waken to the morning; a morning when men ask of the workman, not ‘Is he white?’ but ‘Can he work?’” (Du Bois, 213)

When the nation can combine these together and see the beauty and potentiality for all races, sexes, genders, religions and social groups, then, perhaps, the equality so cherished in the Declaration of Independence can be achieved in the United States.

The problem of the 21^st century may be the problem of our military’s consciousness. The dichotomy of a soldier also being a civilian is not much different from an African being an American. Both the soldier and the African American will experience some form of double-consciousness and second-sight, where they will constantly second-guess how they should act around other civilians. It is possible that an African American soldier experiences a heightened sense of double consciousness, since he or she must interpret how they are seen by not only other fellow white soldiers, but also by civilians who do not understand their experiences. Regardless, both social groups need to tell America their story, their message for the world, so that social dissonance does not continue, and Du Bois’ fears for his deceased boy do not completely come to fruition for future generations. “Well sped, my boy, before the world had dubbed your ambition insolence, had held your ideals unattainable, and taught you to cringe and bow. Better far this nameless void that stops my life than a sea of sorrow for you.” (Du Bois, 213)