Sublime

You can be the greatest artist in the world, but if the eyes that matter aren’t on your work, and if the people who count don’t speak up for you, you hardly exist beyond your own local circle.

These are the

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

In other words, Coltrane is profoundly shaped by his generational location and his class position.

While the disadvantaged are held back, the privileged are offered freedom for their minds to roam the fields, scale the summits, and meander the byways of thought in search of knowledge.

“All of us would have perished long ago” clearly refers to Coltrane’s knowledge of the history of the black American experience.

how might these feelings advance understandings of the relevance of black affects to social life for black folks and others?

“double-consciousness”: It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this 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. One ever feels his two-ness, an American,