"Shout, O children! / Shout, you're free!"

An companion to W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk"  

           If you haven't read "The Souls of Black Folk", then go read sections I and III now. It's not that long, so we'll wait...Good, now you can read this as a companion to that part of the writing and hopefully we can all have a clearer understanding of it. One of the most enlightening parts of it is his disagreement with Booker T. Washington (Sec. III). These two Black leaders had very different views of to best way for Blacks to integrate into American society as equals. We see this same dichotomy of comflicting paths to equality again and agian throughout Black history in America. In the long run, the basic views of Mr. Du Bois are the preferred method, but it is interesting to think about how different things might (or might not) be if Mr. Washington's method had been applied.

"The Souls of Black Folk"

The first passage of this writing is a poetic account of black history in America since emancipation. Du Bois recounts his first experience with racism and how, even as a child, it changed him personally. It made him bitter and separate and then, later, it motivated him by way of vengeance and a personal sense of greatness and responsibility. He uses this personal change to mirror the struggle of the free Blacks in America.

He feels that it is hard to be both American and black. He would not destroy either, because both have something to offer the world. He cannot be both, because the ends are to divergent. To raise him up with skill, only sets contempt against him; and to remain ignorant leaves his potential unused. This situation leaves him the worst of both, an ignorant vagabond. He could use the skill he had to raise his people up; the world hated him for the skill and for being black, so he could not accomplish equality or find acceptance from anyone. This sets the beginning of the cycle of an unfulfilled want of a Black identity.

Blacks tried to follow the elusive gifts from freedom without success. Then the fifteenth(15^th) Amendment came and Blacks could vote. They took this power, but to no lasting avail. So some Blacks tried traditional book learning. However, all who measured their success did so to point out the negative and did not allow them any real material gain or success. From this, they did get self-insight and a sense of their own power and mission. Blacks knew they had to be themselves to gain a position in the world and so they analyzed this new thought. They felt the social degradation and the poverty of their being, a poverty caused by generations of slavery mixed with a resulting ignorance, and this was all they had to compete against Whites, who were the culture and the society and the law. In addition, a stain covered their body, the evidence of the rape of their ancestral women by White people and their legal institutions. This robbed them of their African honor and purity and only gave them the curse of evil blood in their veins that sensed to destroy their self-image as a people. Again, we see an attempt at seeing where they fit in, as a people, and coming away from the experience dejected.

This situation should allow them time for introspection and self-healing, but the world moves on an unrelentingly judges them against the standard set by others. Whites gloat over the failures, obfuscate the successes, and explain away prejudice as a natural and right way of living. Blacks seek agreement in understanding when applying this sensibly, such as cultural differences, but they are helpless against that racism that pervades all things and wants nothing but to perpetuate it and set discouragement as the natural state of all Black people. With this total assault against their spirit, came the loss of initiative and a racial depression and hopelessness. They lamented their ignorance and questioned the value of knowledge or of voting, since, by force or fraud, it gave them nothing in the end. White society echoed this depression on them and told them to be content with their sad lot as their appropriate place. Here, I believe, the depression is finally strong enough to cause that total rebuilding of thought

Out of this despair came a great awakening that showed them that each of the things they sought were wrong, not for what they were, but for what they were not. Each of the prizes politics, education, and others need combining and forming with a Negro identity that will appeal to the American Republic so that eventually they can be strong, teach to, and learn from the White race. They begin not without, but with their own prizes to give. Their music, folk tales, and other cultural history has become the American culture in the time they have been here in bondage and free.

Their goal, as Du Bois sees it, is to give dynamic life to a clinical society of money and data. They will add this to America with the heart of their historic race, and in the name of human opportunity. It is a high ideal that has borne true since then. Unfortunately, his concept of the underlying contempt for his people and the unsettled identity of his people, because of their tumultuous history, have also shown as an accurate account even today.


Afterword - This is the most interesting conflict in American history (Civil War re-enactors be damned). It is a situation that is unique in the modern world. Only in America was a legally enslaved people freed into a modern society and back by a conflicted federal republican government that hated and helped them, depending on the state, the issue, and the administration. Over a hundred and fifty years, American political thinkers have been trying to solve the problem that slavery created. Great men such as W.E.B Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, then later Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and their contemporary counterparts such as Cornel West and Thurgood Marshall won't let the issue of racial inequality in America settle in the dust of history until it is destroyed and we are a truly united society.


Suggested Readings: Everyone has surely read or heard Martin Luther King Jr's "I have a Dream" (The greatest piece of American oratory that was surprisingly ineffective.) and now you have also read W.E.B. Du Bois's "The Souls of Black Folk". A good continuance into the applicable thoughts on these issues in a modern light are, Thurgood Marshall's "The Constitution's Bicentennial: Commemorating the Wrong Document?" (It is an intriguing title for a Supreme Court Justice to write.) and the book Race Matters, by Cornel West (about the cultural aftermath of the L.A. riots).


                                                                                -  Japheth