William Edward Burghardt DuBois is one of the most influential black leaders. He helped founded the NAACP, was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and fought for integration and equal rights regardless of race. He wrote the famous essay Double Consciousness that expresses the hardship of not only being black, but also American. There was another racial group that had the same discrimination and hardship; however, many are not aware of it. Filipino-Americans struggled through the same adversities as African-Americans; thus, many similarities lie between the two different races.When DuBois wrote Double Consciousness, he had just returned to the north from the south. This is where his knowledge of racism became more defined; he really tasted it. He came from Great Barrington, Massachusetts, which was very lightly populated with African Americans. There was racism present, but only little signs of it. When he visited the south, he finally realized how discrimination incarcerated his people; how it wouldn’t let them know their true selves and potential. In this famous essay, DuBois describes the feelings of being two different people in one body, African and American. He describes how people of his kind can only see themselves through the eyes of others.Filipinos faced the same discrimination. In 1902, the Cooper Act was passed by the Congress that makes it illegal to operate a business, own property, vote, live in an American residential neighborhood, and become a naturalized citizen. A majority of Filipinos worked on sugar cane plantations in Hawaii; moreover, it was illegal for any Filipino to marry whites (California’s Anti-Miscegenation Law.) Filipino-Americans of the 1900’s lived through many hardships, just as the African Americans. There was a man of Filipino decent who was very much like DuBois. This man even collaborated with the eminent DuBois to push the publishing of the aut...
