It is a particular sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at ones self through the eyes of others, of measuring ones soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. explains W. E. B. DuBois. DuBois essay,Of Spiritual Strivings helps to explain the feelings Gregory Williams suffers throughduring his childhood and adolescence by trying his hardest to been seen as he is, a smartarticulate boy, but being seen as just the stereotypical African American lazy boy. Gregory Williams, the autobiographor of Life On The Color Line, experiences the life of awhite boy in the 1950s, yet was not always able to live that life due to his AfricanAmerican heritage. The way he was treated as a young child and teenager, showed hisrace a social concept, one that was dependent on where he lived, who his friends were andwho his family was, instead of his ancestry. Omi and Winant talk about race as a socialissue in their essay titled, Racial Formation. Although Gregory had a hard time fittinginto either racial group, it all came down to who he wanted to be friends with and who hewanted to be associated with and who would come to befriend him and take care of him. He had to make the choice of how he would be seen to others, hopefully it was the way hewants to be seen.As Gregory started to grow up in a small town of Virginia living life as what hesaw as a normal white boys life. He was able to go to whites only schools, movietheaters, and swimming pools for the first ten years of his life. His family, to the nakedeye, appeared to be a well of white family whom owned their own business and did wellsupporting themselves. Gregory thought this was how his whole life would be, havingpeople look at him as a successful white boy who would turn into a successful white man.This was the plan until after Gregorys mother abandoned him, his brother Mikeand his father. Their wealth and healthy life style took and abru...
