My new essay & Poem entitled:
Black Kripping W.E.B Dubois and Ralph Ellison: Quadruple Vision

“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” (W. E. B. Du Bois)

Like Nahum Welang 2018 essay entitled, “Triple Consciousness: The Reimagination of Black Female Identities in Contemporary American Culture”, I argue in 2023 that the issue of Black disabled men makes two updates in the theme of the Black Radical Tradition. One on hand it changes W.E.B Dubois’s “Double Vision” to quadruple vision, and, on the other, it gives fresh meaning to  Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man”.

Is the issue that disabled Black men provide another viewpoint of discrimination or that there is something about the being and body of disabled Black men? Is it the pain of social stigma as well as the pain of/in his body that we must think about?

It would seem like being both quadruple vision and invisible would cancel each other but that is the life of Black disabled men, they are there but not there. Seeing in four vision means being Black in a White supremacy, being disabled in an ableist society, being feared and pitied, being imagined as a threat, and being thought of as useless, asexual and hyper masculinity means all these things at the same time.

Being love by his mother and being seen as worthless, but at the same time as privilege by many women and sometimes as scholars. Not being seen he falls into the invisible man but at the same time being watched all the time from police to White women to the general public as poor, homeless, but, on the other side being seen as a threat as parents hold their children and refuse to make eye contact. This kind of viewpoint of Black disabled men confuses Black disabled men on how to be in public. Just for being themselves they experience all kinds of emotions. Black parents can do so much to prepare their Black disabled sons. They, Black parents, mostly mothers put Paul Dunbar’s mask (The mask may refer to African-Americans being forced to conform to stereotypes forced upon them by white society) on their Black disabled sons for safety, but the mask also means to always hide his true self. Thus, disabled Black boys do not learn to feel comfortable in their identity as Black and disabled. They learn to run from himselves and others who look like them, thus do not have a community.

Jim Crow, the elderly disabled man was one of the first to experience identity theft when he was turned into something that the Black community wanted to distance themselves from. This distance left and still leaved Black disabled men on the outskirts of the Black community. And a threat to never seen as Black respectability aka climbing from poverty to the middle class. To live and work close to White non-disabled people in their gated fence type of living where some times they can see how White disabled boys can grow up totally different from the W.E.B. Dubois and Ralph Ellison’s Quadruple Vision Invisible Man aka Black disabled Men. This avoidance also are seeds to grow Black ableism in the Black community.

Poem

By Leroy F. Moore Jr.

Black Kripping W.E.B Dubois and Ralph Ellison: Quadruple Vision

W. E. B. Dubois took off his glasses
It’s from double to triple to quadruple
Was he going blind
Count it off 1 2 3 4?
Never saw it coming
Invisible man became visible
Triple consciousness to quadruple consciousness
Black disabled in a White able-bodied world
Quadruple threat, triple to quadruple vision
Seeing things in three’s then four’s
In 4’d
How does the world view him
Is it us versus them
Watch with the forth eye
Eye for an eye
Doesn’t leave him blind
Triple consciousness theory for Black women
Add disability equals quadruple
That’s where we limp and pop
My Black disabled people put it on wax
Made it Krip-Hop
And that is facts
See you see me in quadruple vision

Putting W.E.B Dubois into Krip-Hop Theory
From The Black Kripple Quadruple Vision