Du Bois described a two-ness: seeing yourself always through someone else's eyes

W. E. B. Du Bois described 'double consciousness' as the sense of always viewing yourself through the eyes of a society that looks on with contempt, measuring your own soul by a tape that isn't yours. He called it the feel of 'two warring ideals in one dark body,' each pulling a different way. Naming that split, he argued, was the first step past it.

— W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk — Chapter 1, "Of Our Spiritual Strivings" (1903)