In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois says that blacks have a sort of doubleness in them not found among whites. Blacks cannot just "be themselves," but must always think about how they are being perceived by whites. This creates a sense that you are always of two minds: that you are not only thinking and doing, but that you are thinking about how others perceive you, and adjust accordingly. Whites never have to deal with this. Being the majority and having the majority power, they can just be themselves without worry about how anybody is thinking about them.
Du Bois would probably not be surprised if he learned that other minorities were put in similar situations in the U.S., but it probably didn't occur to him that there were people out there with different kinds of minds, and that they too would develop such a doubleness.
I know all about this double-mindedness, because I experience it constantly. I not only have to think about what I'm going to say or do, but I have to think about how others might take it. I can either just say or do whatever I want as I want and hope that I don't do something that will set people off, or I can always consciously think about everything I say or do before I say or do it, testing against what I expect the expectations are (and hoping I'm getting those right). If it takes me a moment to respond to something, it's because I'm going through all this nonsense to make sure I don't say or do something wrong.
Now, you might expect this to take place in a 45-year-old man, but you wouldn't expect it to take place just quite yet in a 7-year-old boy. However, Daniel has lately been saying some things that shows he--on some level, at least--does understand that he has to engage in this double-mindedness.
While we all behave differently in different environments--school, home, church, work, etc.--rarely do we think these things through. However, when I asked Daniel one day if he behaved at school the way he did at home, he told me that because he has to keep it together at school, he likes to "go crazy" at home. That is, this is something he's actually thought through. Other children may do the same thing, more or less, but how many would articulate it as such?
More negatively, Daniel has complained that his "brain is rotten." He understands that the way his brain works is not the same as everyone else. While we would certainly prefer him to think of his brain as merely different and not as "rotten," we get what he, as a 7-year-old, is trying to articulate. When he most recently complained about this, we pointed out to him that I have autism, just like him, and (because the kids happened to be watching Ghostbusters II at the time) that Dan Akyroid has autism. We suggested that someone with as much education as I have and someone who is a successful and funny actor couldn't really have rotten brains, but that rather our brains were just different.
Unfortunately there is the too deeply human belief that "different is wrong," and Daniel will have to learn otherwise as he matures. Because I hardly thought of my brain as rotten (everyone always said how smart I was), I thought that everyone else, being different from me, were wrong. The way that they thought was stupid, as far as I was concerned. Now, knowing what I know about myself, I realize that it is my way which is divergent and different--but that doesn't mean rotten and wrong.
Daniel also insists that nobody likes him, that he has no friends. When we ask his teacher, she keeps insisting that he plays with the other kids all the time, meaning that there is some sort of disconnect between what others see happening and what Daniel seems to perceive. I think it's pretty clear that Daniel understands that the other kids all think he's "weird," which he interprets as them not liking him. It probably doesn't help that Daniel directs play more often than not, and can get upset when people aren't "playing right." Most kids aren't going to like that, and Daniel, not understanding why they wouldn't want to be his pawn pieces, interprets that as them not liking him or wanting to play with him. So there is likely some combination of awareness and ignorance at play, though both are driving Daniel to develop this dual awareness.
It's probably a bit much to expect neurotypical people to allow us to just be ourselves. After all, viewing neurological differences as positive is a recent development, and it's going to take a while to catch on. Maybe there will be a day when people with different neural structures or different cultural backgrounds can just be themselves without having to think about how they will be perceived by the power majority. We don't know what will be gained, or possibly even lost, if and when that happens, but it would be interesting to at least find out. Daniel's double-mindedness is already being developed; perhaps his own children won't have to go through that.
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