The Souls of Black Folk Rewritten in Code

Abstract

This research explores how W.E.B. Du Bois’s theory of double consciousness takes new shape in the digital age, when identity is no longer seen through the eyes of others, but through the silent sorting of algorithms, feeds, and filtered metrics. Drawing on 25 in-depth interviews with primarily Black participants between the ages of 20 and 28, the study examines how race, class, gender, and geography intersect with platform design to shape experiences of visibility, fragmentation, and performance—particularly on Instagram and LinkedIn. While Du Bois’s double consciousness remains the central frame, the analysis expands to include theories of aesthetic labor, algorithmic bias, and platform capitalism, revealing how the demand to be legible online fractures the self into curated parts. Participants spoke of code-switching between platforms, silencing parts of themselves, withholding images, and crafting alternate accounts—not as acts of disappearance, but as quiet refusals to be flattened. These strategies suggest that resistance online is often not loud, but carefully rooted in a desire to remain whole within systems that reward polish over complexity, coherence over contradiction. By extending Du Bois’s vision into the realm of algorithmic life, this project reveals how the souls of Black folk are now rendered in code, optimized for visibility yet vulnerable to erasure. And yet, within the glitch, within the silence, something else endures: a blueprint for digital survival, a fragmented kind of sovereignty, and a demand not just to be seen, but to be free.