Advanced Technical Centers Sociology Essay

Essay Four

Videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EIYTpHxMJcI

https://m.facebook.com/Pointsourceyouth/videos/220437192075949/?locale2=sw_KE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dyjAURtkKw

The Bridge Poem

.1979

by: Donna Kate Rushin

I’ve had enough

I’m sick of seeing and touching

Both sides of things

Sick of being the damn bridge for everybody

Nobody

Can talk to anybody

Without me

Right?

I explain my mother to my father my father to my little sister

My little sister to my brother my brother to the white feminists

The white feminists to the Black church folks the Black church folks

To the ex-hippies the ex-hippies to the Black separatists the Black separatists to the artists the artists to my friends’ parents..

Then

I’ve got to explain myself

To everybody

I do more translating

Than the Gawdamn U.N.

Forget it

I’m sick of it

I’m sick of filling in your gaps

Sick of being your insurance against

The isolation of your self-imposed limitations

Sick of being the crazy at your holiday dinners

Sick of being the odd one at your Sunday Brunches

Sick of being the sole Black friend to 34 individual white people

Find another connection to the rest of the world

Find something else to make you legitimate

Find some other way to be political and hip

I will not be the bridge to your womanhood

Your manhood

Your human-ness

I’m sick of reminding you not to Close off too tight for too long

I’m sick of mediating with your worst self

On behalf of your better selves

1 am sick

Of having to remind you

To breathe

Before you suffocate

Your own fool self

Forget it

Stretch or drown

Evolve or die

The bridge I must be

Is the bridge to my own power

I must translate

My own fears

Mediate

My own weaknesses

1 must be the bridge to nowhere

But my true self

And then

I will be useful

Essay #4, I would like us to revisit US Black scholar W.E.B. DuBois and his theory of Double Consciousness from his book “The Souls of Black Folk”, published in 1903.

A quote we explored from the book says: “the sense of always looking at oneself through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on it in amused contempt and pity, …whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

I would like for you to watch all three videos and also read The Bridge Poem.

In your essay, I’d like you to explain how the quote from DuBois book is applicable. Demonstrate how something written in 1903 can be applied to a poen from 1979 and a video from 2022. By doing so, you will be showing that you understand DuBois theory; the meaning of his words.