WEB Du Bois, in The Souls of Black Folk, seems to speak of a raceless society, where the quality of one's character was the only basis for being judged. Yet this is not what Du Bois saw in his time and it is not what we see today. The idea of ​​race is still very distorted in the minds of many people, and leads to misjudging historical and current phenomena. It therefore seems that not only has the color line been the problem of the 20th century, as Du Bois argued, but also of the 21st. This is why James Weldon Johnson's novel Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is still such a relevant work. The novel demonstrates the true meaning of Du Bois's theory of double consciousness and also shows the responses that black people might have to their current state "within the Veil"; furthermore Johnson seems to support both Locke and Du Bois in their reasoning that the ultimate goal should be a society in which double consciousness cannot exist because the discourse becomes one of absolute equality. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay Before the Autobiography can be understood as a depiction of double consciousness, the idea itself must be examined. As Adolph L. Reed Jr. argues in W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line, this is a crucial first step because the phrase "double consciousness" has been so widely used to represent other ideas that it can be misrepresented. He says, “several intellectuals read Du Bois ahistorically and instead project their own thoughts onto him” (92). But you have to remember that this can be true with any author. In any case, later in Du Bois's career, as he attended graduate school at Harvard and again in Germany, the academic question of race became a "question of culture and cultural history" instead of a pseudoscience claiming fundamental difference between blacks and blacks. white (124). He came to the same conclusion in his essay Conservation of Races, that race is an inadequate construct and that its foundation is socioeconomic and ideological, in other words cultural. What then is the idea of ​​double consciousness? It could be read as a struggle for blacks to define opposing identities: one as the object of a social problem or simply different, and the other as a person with equal opportunities and potential. Johnson's novel is able to first demonstrate the foundation of Du Bois's double consciousness, that race is socially constructed, and also shows the identity struggle between the two aforementioned states of mind. The moment of realization of the veil and double consciousness is often a monumental event that many authors have written about, including Du Bois himself. He says, “I remember well when the shadow overwhelmed me” (694). Johnson's narrator also has a similar experience. As a child the narrator identifies with his white peers and fights with "the niggers" until one day his teacher asks all the white scholars to stand up. The narrator stands and the teacher responds, “For now you sit and stand with the others” (808). It is then that the narrator learns about his other self, which, due to social and cultural factors, is seen differently. The narrator says of this first experience: I have often lived that hour, that day, that week, in which the miracle of my passage from one world to another was accomplished; because I really have passed into another world. From that moment I looked with different eyes, my thoughts became coloured, my words dictated, my actions limited by a dominating, all-pervading idea. (810)This not only demonstrates the importance of the event to the narrator as a child, but also demonstrates very wellthe idea of ​​double consciousness as Du Bois understood it. The novel's underlying assumption is that "race" (being identified as black or white) is seemingly arbitrary. This is shown in the many different times the narrator is able to switch groups quite freely. Of course, if race were more than how society sees you, this change wouldn't be as possible. In "The Mirror and the Veil: The Passing Romance and the Search for American Racial Identity," says John Sheehy, "the boy was in a peculiar situation: he could choose his race. This choice is obviously not simple" ( 401). He goes on to argue that the narrator can be seen as “living on the color line” due to the extreme fluidity of his racial identity (406). In "Contemporary Themes in Johnson's Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man", Robert E. Fleming argues that the fact that the narrator is nameless in the novel "underscores the main psychological problem of the novel; that is, in a very real sense the narrator he doesn't know who he is, and his autobiography records his vain search for identity" (121). This is true throughout the novel until the end. Sheehy argues that beneath the portrayal of race as a dichotomy, black and white, the narrator strikes a subtle and subversive note when he says, "I'm happy to be who I am." This could be seen as the narrator moving beyond the simple black/white mentality and ultimately choosing an identity for himself that is neither black nor white. There are many different ways to react to the problem of double consciousness. Du Bois points out that two extreme positions can be taken. To Africanize America or to “whiten its Negro soul in a wave of white Americanism” (695). Neither outcome is desirable; however, Du Bois makes it very clear what he thinks would be the best solution. This happens when a man can "be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spat upon by his fellows, without the doors of Opportunity being brutally closed in his face (695). What is avoided here is further separation of races and the radicalization of white or black positions on race relations issues, one can only assume that Du Bois saw a future in which people could work together toward common goals, but at the same time resist the temptation to. a complete integration, a very similar approach. position to that of Alain Locke. Locke also probably believed that race was an artificial standard, as he suggests in The New Negro social problem" (985). double consciousness, being seen, treated and raised not as an equal but as an anomaly. Locke also recognizes the fact that this is indeed a distorted perspective, as Du Bois argued throughout his career after have come to the conclusion that race is a social construct. The goal then is a society in which race is recognized for what it is: a discursive, obsolete lie that has no merit in today's society. Of course, this isn't to say that race relations aren't important, in fact they are. But they must be seen for what they are historic social measures that are being perpetuated, unjustifiably today. Additionally, Johnson is able to help us understand this concept through the narrator's nebula "race." The answer to the problem of double consciousness is also an important factor seen in the story. The character's response was to "pass", that is, to allow society to consider him white. We then see that the idea of ​​race manifests itself socially. But the answer that all three authors seem to support is the abolition of racism>.