Double consciousness is an idea that it talks about racial subjugation and it says that espe in the context of Du Bois's writing for black people within a white dominated society, they have to think twice about themselves. They have to think firstly about their own actions and secondly about how those actions will be perceived by others, by white, a white audience

...the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,––a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,––an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.