“At such a time true lovers of humanity can only hold higher
the pure ideals of science, and continue to insist that if we would solve a
problem we must study it, and that there is but one coward on earth, and that
is the coward that dare not know” (Du Bois, “The Study of Negro Problems.” P.
27 1898)
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois
Introduction
“Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may
show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth
Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the
problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color line.” P. 3
“Leaving, then, the world of the white man, I have stepped
within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses, --
the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle
of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom
written.” P.3
“I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh
of them that live within the Veil?” p. 4 (See Genesis 2:23)
Of Our spiritual
Strivings
“Between me and the other world there is ever an unasked
question: unasked by some through feelings of delicacy; by others through the difficulty
of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, flutter around it. They approach me
in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then,
instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? They say, I know
an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville, or, Do not
these southern outrages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am
interested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion may require. To
the real question, How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word.” P.
7-8
“The sky was bluest when I could beat my mates at
examination time, or beat them at a footrace, or even beat their stringy heads.
Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the worlds I
longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.” Pg. 8
“It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, the 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” pg 9
“The history of the American Negro is the history of this
strife,--this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double
self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the
older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too
much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a
flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the
world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an
American without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the
doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.” Pg. 9
(^Favorite Quote)
“Throughout history, the powers of single black men flash
here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has
rightly gauged their brightness.” Pg. 9
“The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox
that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors,
while the knowledge which would teach the white would was Greek to his own
flesh and blood” pg. 10
“It was the ideal of “book-learning”; the curiosity, born of
compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of
the white man, the longing to know.” Pg. 12
“To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land
of dollars is the very bottom of hardships” pg. 12
He felt the weight of his ignorance,--not simply of letters
but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shrinking
and awkwardness of decades and centuries shacked his hands and feet. Nor was
his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red stain of bastardy..” pg. 13
“ A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race
with the world, but rather allowed to give all its tie and thought to its own social
problems.” Pg. 13
“But Alas! While sociologists gleefully count his bastards
and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is
darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Man call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly
explain it as the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning
against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the “lower”
races. To which the Negro cries Amen! And swears that to so much of this
strange prejudice is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness,
and progress, he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance” pg. 13
“What need of education, since we must always cook and
serve?” Pg. 13
“The bright ideals of the past,--physical freedom, political
power, the training of brain sand the training of hands,--all these in turn
have waxed and waned until even the last grows dim and overcast. Are they all
wrong,--all false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and
incomplete,--the dreams of a credulous race-childhood, or the fond imaginings
of the other world which does not know and does not want to know our power” pg.
14
“There are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human
spirit of the Declaration of Independence that the American Negroes” pg. 15
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