THE DIABOLICAL DOUBLE Consciousness

Adolescence is life between childhood and adulthood. It starts with physical maturity and ends when the adult reaches independent status. Adolescence begins with puberty, a time when a boy or girl matures sexually. With puberty comes a period of increase in hormones, rapid physical development, most of the time beginning at age 11 in girls and age 13 for boys. During this period of growth, the primary sex characteristics – the reproductive organs and external genitalia-develop dramatically. So do secondary sex characteristics, the non-reproductive traits such as breasts and hips in girls, facial hair and deepened voice in boys, pubic and underarm hair in both sexes.

Cognitive Development

The stage where the adolescence starts to develop the ability to reason giving them a new level of social awareness and moral judgment is called cognitive development. During the cognitive stage the teenager becomes more contemplative and becomes more concerned with what others are thinking about them.

During the early teens, reasoning is more self-focused. They feel no one has ever experienced what they are experiencing. This is why so many teens feel that their parents don’t understand.

Case in point, my mother taught me how to sew when I was seven years old. I was also a gifted singer and had a propensity to “play church”with my playmates. By the time I was 16 I was designing my own clothes. On the other hand, the clothing I designed and would attempt to wear, my mother or father would say things like, “You're not going outside with that on!”

I always have flashbacks of when me and my two childhood friends, Marion Henderson and Vivian Reed, would spend a lot of our time singing together. Marion on the piano and Vivian and I doing alto and soprano. We were so proud of our harmony that I asked my mom if we could compete in a talent show at our junior high school. My Pentecostal mother adamantly denied me to “be sing'n the devil's songs.” My dad was quiet on that one.

That Pentecostal teaching caused me to suffer from extreme guilt and low self-esteem due to my parents not supporting my giftedness they confined to home and the church world. The Pentecostal doctrine of sin,restrictive dress codes or the condemnation of any kind of display of affection before marriage developed in me insecurities and having a tendency to always second-guess myself.

Bottom line: My parents didn't understand me until I was almost 50. My dad confessed to me that he didn't “understand” me. And, my mom confessed that she was just “ignorant”.

Social Development

The most renowned study on the psychosocial levels of young children to late adulthood was done by Erik Erikson. His studies indicate that each stage of life has its own “psychosocial” task, which is a “crisis” that needs to be resolved.iii Erikson’s study of psychosocial development has eight stages:

Infancy to 2 years Trust vs. mistrust

1 to 2 years (toddlers) Autonomy vs. shame and doubt

3 to 5 years (pre-school) Initiative vs. guilt

6 years to puberty Competence to puberty

Teen years into 20s Identity vs. role confusion

Young Adulthood Intimacy vs. isolation

(20s to early 40s)

Middle Adulthood Generativity vs. stagnation

(40s to 60s)

Late Adulthood Integrity vs. despair

Late 60s and up

Moral Development

One of the challenges from childhood through adolescence is being able to determine right from wrong along with developing character, the psychological muscles for controlling impulses.iv In the 1980s Lawrence Kohlberg thought that as we develop intellectually we pass through as many as six stages of moral thinking, moving from the simplistic and concrete toward the more abstract and principled. He categorized the six stages into three areas:

Preconventional morality: Before age 9, children operate from their own self-interests. They obey to avoid punishment or to gain rewards.

Conventional morality: By early adolescence, morality should evolve to a level that cares for others and uphold the law and social rules.

Postconventional morality: Affirms people agreed upon rights or follows what one personally perceives as basic ethical principals.v

This study is on Afro-American females, age 13 and 13-16 year old males as they approach and experience the fifth level of Erickson’s psychosocial development theory which is “identity vs. role confusion”. In adolescence, the task is to synthesize past, present and future possibilities into a clearer sense of self. vi The adolescence at this stage wonders “Who am I”, “What do I want to do” and “What values should I live by?”

In order for a 13 year old to understand what values they should chose to live by, first they must understand the meaning of “value.” I asked three different young people ages 12 – 13 what were their values? Two of them answered, “I don’t know”. One answered “Would you clarify that please.” I did give them the basic definition of value which is “the assigned worth of importance.”vii The 13 year old’s response was “I live by Christian values.” Christian values to this young person meant “not lying, not swearing, not having sex and obeying your parents.”

In America young people form their identities by trying out various selves in different situations. They may act one way at home and another way away from home. For example, I watched a 13 year old girl, Kayatta, experience much role confusion when she traveled with my granddaughter and I on a missionary trip to the Bahamas. At home she plays humble with her mother and stepfather. Whatever her mother asked her to do she does. On the other hand, her mother began to receive numerous calls from Kayattas teacher complaining of her “smart mouth”, “not knowing when to keep quiet” as well as other disruptive behavior.

The neighbors told me that before we opened the after school program, Kayatta and her younger brother, Brennan, stood on their front porch for hours in the cold waiting on one of their parent to come home so that they could get in the house. When I inquired concerning this situation, Kayatta told me that her mother wouldn’t give her a key because she was too irresponsible.

Apparently, her mother started talking to her about becoming more responsible (becoming an independent person). She decides to try her “independent” mode out on me I guess. From the time we left her family at the airport in Pittsburgh, she became unmanageable. She wouldn’t walk with us. On several occasions she kept dropping her plane ticket and other papers necessary to make the trip. When I asked her for her ticket (so that I could keep it safe) she refused to give it to me. As we were being processed to board the ship, the inspectors held her up because she didn’t have her papers filled out. I had to back tract to defuse the situation and to assist her so that she could get on the ship. Once we boarded the ship, I couldn’t keep up with her. I thought it was rather dangerous wondering around on your own. We were traveling with five-hundred other youths, but everyone was sticking with small groups. And our group was not the only ones on the ship or in the hotels.

One morning upon rising in the hotel, I woke my granddaughter and Kayatta up to tell them to go eat at the buffet before it was too late. The buffet was free. Kayatta didn’t want to get up. When she did, she heads out the door with her t-strap pajamas on trimmed in marabou. I told her no way was she going downstairs like that. She replies, “My mother would let me do it!” I had to tell her, this would be the last time she traveled with me anywhere. The rule was while we were serving at the church in the Bahamas, girls had to wear dresses with at least a cap-sleeve. One day Kayatta puts on a very sheer dress showing her bra and panties. I asked her where her slip was. She said her mother never makes her wear one.

Her behavior indicates her level of psychosocial behavior, i.e. her growing ability or inability to relate realistically to other people.

On another occasion I didn’t want to spend money to go on a deep sea diving trip so I asked a group of Nazarene adults we were traveling with to watch out for Kayatta. When they returned they informed me that “she kept disappearing”. They began to question me about her behavior and felt she was unmanageable.

The worse scene was when we were returning to the states. She dropped all of her paper work again. I reached to take it from her as I said, “Let me hold these for you”. She snatched back from me, screaming at me about how she could take care of herself.

At this age it is important to become independent in a totally non-rational, gut-level manner. Adolescence can actually throw tantrums just like a 2 year old or become clingy with a parent like a little child. The hallmark of early teenagers’ developing self-concept and need for independence is their quick embarrassment and desire not to be seen with their parents. (I was the substitute parent for one week) Kids at this stage want to be with their same-sex friends more than with their families. This is the age at which parents become “stupid”, a condition that resolves when adolescents reach the late stage.

I interviewed 3 Black males ages 13-16 years. I also interviewed the now deceased Dr. Lloyd Bell, a well-known Black psychologist and professor in the Pittsburgh area.

The young men that I interviewed hung out across the street from my church every day all day. They barely attended school, have been arrested more than once and are being reared in a single female parent household. The one 16 years old’s mother sleeps all day because she works at the post office at night. The other 16 year old male is being raised by his grandmother/foster parent because his mother is a drug addict. The 13 year old is in foster car. All of three of these young men sell heroin and marijuana. They wear the best of clothes and have cell phones and drive nice cars.

When I asked them about school their answers varied from “they expelled me because my teacher said I threatened her” to “school is boring”. The one young man has been labeled mildly retarded. Yet, from interacting with him, I feel he has been misdiagnosed. His problem I believe is due to “disruption of attachment.” He has been shuffled from foster home to foster home starting at an early age. Rumor has it that his grandmother took him just so she could get his check. If this is true, then his home environment may not be very positive. After all, he hangs in the street from sun up to sun down. This young man apparently has never experienced the stimulation of attention from a regular caregiver.

According to Dr. Lloyd Bell, “One of the central struggles of growing up Black in White America is the moral and spiritual context the young Black men have to work out their beliefs through. They experience disparities in education between the rich and the poor – Black and White. Black boys being raised by the mother and not having the same educational or career upward mobility as the White family effects cognitive development and infringes upon role confusion.”

In reference to the disparities in the state of Pennsylvania, $4,000 a year is spend on each student in the inner city verses $12,000 yearly is spent on each student in our wealthy suburbs.

Dr. Bell also related, “Identity diffusion or role confusion begins when the young Black male tries to figures out “who am I?’ The father is missing from the home. Therefore, the adolescence has to go outside of the immediate family because he is being raised by a female. He has to look to an uncle, grandfather or coach for simulation and attention.”

It is difficult to teach a lot of young Black males how to select and prepare for an occupation. A lot of them feel they can make more money on the street corner then working for a fast-food chain. Some fee they are l not prepared to compete due to poor reading and math skills. I always encourage them to consider working for McDonalds or one of the chains with “moving up the ladder” in mind. I tell them to work toward be a manager to possibly being the owner of a McDonalds or Wendy’s. Which is one way of insuring economic dependence? Then I take them to meet Mr. Rice, Jr. Mr. Rice is a 31 year old Black man whose family owns 11 McDonalds in Pennsylvania. One of the stores they own is near our church.

As I interacted with both Black males and females, some of them are intimidated by people of other races. If they attend an all Black school, they haven’t had an opportunity to interact with White children. At our Vacation Bible School I noticed that all the Black children migrated towards each other and all the White children sat together. I intentionally, rearranged some of the groups so that there would be interaction between the two cultures.

Some of the Black girls want to talk about the “White man's this, and the White people that….” Then they spend $50 to get their hair straightened so their hair looks just like White people’s hair. Or they purchase wigs, or get hair weaves of hair that looks like White people’s hair. Young Black boys sometimes speak of the White race in a negative since, yet they purchase fancy cars with dope money, or set a goal to go to college so that they can earn money to live like the White man. This is what W. E. Dubois calls the diabolical double consciousness. I myself have been affected by the hand of the oppressor by all the racism and sexism I experienced being one of the first Black to be hired on the Police Department, yet I don’t have a problem wearing my hair straightened by a perm, I spend my money at not just Black owned businesses and have some close White friends. I can fluctuate easily between conversations on the subject of the problems of “driving while Black” to preaching “Jesus sees us all the same” to asking God in prayer to “please don’t let this be an all Black church”. That DIOBOLICAL DOUBLE CONSCIOUSNESS! Or is it role confusion?

The diabolical double consciousness is to me a major part of “role confusion”. In Dubois’s book “The Souls of Black Folk”, he wrote:

“After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, 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. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, or measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One every feels his two-ness, an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled striving; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

When we look at the affects of slavery, we can see how it has affected the cognitive development through the generations. One might ask what slavery has to do with psychology. Let’s define slave: A salve is a person who is held in bondage by another person against his or her will and denied the right and opportunity of freedom and full human growth and development. Slavery and being denied the right to be educated hindered the ability to reason abstractly and to development formal logic. We were deliberately kept ignorant of our birth, age, parentage, name, religion and customs.

When we look at how the Black male slave was torn away from his wife to work in the field from sun up to sun down, to be broken like a horse while the light skinned slaves worked as servants in the master’s house and had more privileges. Many times they were lighter because they had a White father and a Black mother. Many of the women were rapped and bore the slave master’s children. Sometime the Black slave female was required to breastfeed the master’s baby.

How does the affects of slavery manifest itself in modern times? An email sent to me by my former pastor, Rev. Samuel Peterson addresses the effects of slavery on our youth in modern times:

For those of you who heard it, this is the article Dee Lee was reading this on his morning on a New York radio station in July 1996. For those of you who didn't hear it, this is very deep and true! "BLACKS DON'T READ". This is very deep, and unfortunately, very true! This is a heavy piece and a Caucasian wrote it. "THEY ARE STILL OUR SLAVES we can continue to reap profits from the Blacks without the effort of physical slavery. Look at the current methods of containment that they use on themselves: IGNORANCE, GREED, and SELFISHNESS. Their IGNORANCE is the primary weapon of containment. A great man once said, "The best way to hide something from Black people is to put it in a book." We now live in the Information Age. They have gained the opportunity to read any book on any subject through the efforts of their fight for freedom, yet they refuse to read. There are numerous books readily available at Borders, Barnes &Noble, and Amazon.com, not to mention their own Black Bookstores that provide solid blueprints to reach economic equality (whichshould have been their fight all along), but few readconsistently, if at all. GREED is another powerfulweapon of containment. Blacks, since the abolition of slavery, have had large amounts of money at their disposal. Last year they spent 10 billion dollars during Christmas, out of their 450 billion dollars intotal yearly income (2.22%). Any of us can use them as our target market, for any business venture we care to dream up, no matter how outlandish, they will buy into it. Being primarily a consumer people, they function totally by greed. They continually want more, with little thought for saving or investing. They would rather buy some new sneaker than invest in starting a business. Some even neglect their children to have the latest Tommy or FUBU. And they still think that having a Mercedes, and a big house gives them "Status" or that they have achieved the American Dream. They are fools! The vast majority of their people are still in poverty because their greed holds them back from collectively making better communities. With the help of BET, and the rest of their black media that often broadcasts destructive images into their own homes, we will continue to see huge profits like those of Tommy and Nike. (Tommy Hilfiger has even jeered them, saying He doesn't want their money, and look at how the fools spend more with him than ever before!). They'll continue to show off to each other while we build solid communities with the profits from our businesses that we market to them. SELFISHNESS (I would add self-interests as well), ingrained in their minds through slavery, is one of the major ways we can continue to contain them. One of their own, Dubois said that there was an innate division in their culture. A "Talented Tenth" he called it."

We have Black men that are irresponsible and mothers who abandon their babies for drugs or for lack of parenting skills. Somewhere way back in days of slavery a vast social problem was born through the fathers of this country that has now visited upon the fourth generation. The root of irresponsibility, the inability to make social connections, a perverted since of identity and inability to form close relationships and no capacity for intimate love started a long time ago. When we were colored……

King Solomon said, “There is nothing new under the sun”.

The content of this article is based on my interaction as a former pastor with people that attend or live in the community were the church was located. Duquesne, Pa. which considered a “distressed” community with the average income being at poverty level.

I never taught a lot of condemnation to young people attending services or my classes. I rendered numerous liberating lecture, messages of hope and messages teaching them the meaning of loving who you are.

These young people need to know that we are uniquely and divinely created in the image of a higher power. There is a plan for each one of their lives. One of the sayings I still continue to teach the younger generation is, "If you woke up this morning, be about your purpose."

The faith-based contregations and organizations are the hub of the community. When I retired I left the following programs in place. A after-school faith-based curriculum at the church. We tutored middle-school age children with a program called “Switched On School House”. We tutored them in Math, Reading and Bible Knowledge.

There needs to be more projects created to empower a group of at least ten youth at a time that are economically poor or disadvantaged to have some control over their young lives and community. This program would affirmed the concern for humankind. We must become dissatisfied with poverty and oppression. It is imperative that the faith-baseds organizations have a mind to partner with outside agencies in order to unite in faith and action through sharing, confronting and enabling. Through this program we are seeking to change the structures that perpetuate poverty, oppression and the injustices that impair the Black youth’s identity and sometimes cause role confusion. Knowing a person’s developmental stage helps the church and educators design ministry that will foster and nurture the growth of those individuals.

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