W.E.B. DuBois and William James on Double Consciousness.

And consider further that James was DuBois's teacher at Harvard and DuBois described him as his "favorite" teacher there, and his "guide to clear thinking."[7] Given these considerations it seems fair to conclude that DuBois was familiar with James's writings and consequently that when he used their vocabulary he did so deliberately knowing what he was doing and how he was inviting his readers to understand him. Since I am assuming that DuBois agreed with James that second sight is impossible, his account of how the Negro acquires his second sight will have to be an account of how the Negro may I seem i to acquire a second sight, together of course with its very special peculiarities. Further we will see, as the nature of the Negro's second sight becomes clearer, that DuBois's reference to the Negro as "gifted with second sight" was meant sardonically to imply that the Negro's second sight was not a gift but a curse. The clairvoyance of "The Souls of White Folk" and the second sight of "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" have names that mean the same thing; clairvoyance means second sight. [Extracted from the article]