[Ads-l] "Second Sight" (W. E. B. Du Bois Term, Not in OED)

[Shapiro, Fred]

W. E. B. Du Bois's term "second sight" is not included in OED.  ChatGPT describes this term as follows:

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W. E. B. Du Bois first used the term “second-sight” in his essay “The Strivings of the Negro People,” published in The Atlantic Monthly in August 1897.
He later revised the essay and republished it as the opening chapter, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” in his 1903 book The Souls of Black Folk.
In the passage, Du Bois writes:
“The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world…”
He uses the concept to describe the distinctive perspective of Black Americans, who understand both their own experience and how they are perceived by white society.
***

Fred Shapiro


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