Souls of Black Folk: a Call for Ultimate Liberation
Published in 1903, Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois remains to be one of the most important and a pioneering book on political, economic, social, and cultures lives of African-Americans in America. It is a collection of autobiographical and other essays by Du Bois that touch upon a variety of issues, including slavery, racism, liberation, history of African-Americans, and the questions of identity and consciousness. The main argument of Du Bois in this book is that African-Americans need to develop spiritually and through education to attain full political, economic, and social rights alongside Whites in America. Du Bois predicted that it would be a long struggle and therefore argued at the beginning of his book that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of color line" (Du Bois vii). Throughout the book, Du Bois discusses several issues to prove his thesis. He discusses the invisibility of Blacks in American history because of the "veil," failure of Reconstruction policies, lack of education, and the failures of previous African-American leaders and Churches in properly championing the rights of colored people after the Emancipation.
The question of the "veil" is a recurring theme in Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois argues that African-Americans have been left outside the realm of the world seen by Whites, i.e. behind a veil. The veil makes it hard Black souls to see the world. African-Americans thus are "invisible" in history and at present as human beings with true aspirations and rich souls. "After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world," Du Bois says, "a world which yields him no true sense of self-consciousness,...
Souls of Black Folks In the book The Souls of Black Folks, author W.E.B. Dubois writes about the disparages in the treatments of southern blacks. Throughout the work Dubois discusses the various issues that require attention and the policies in the United States which require reformation in order to create equality in the races. African-Americans of the south deserved the right to vote, a decent and equal education, and above
He thus rejects Afrocentrism as a fundamental political act of self-definition by American Blacks along with the term as an African Diaspora to describe slavery, given that the slave trade dispersed members of Black tribes in Africa and in other areas of the Western world. Black Americans, once again, have produced a unique cultural legacy and suffered unique historical injustices, as distinct from the injustices of colonialism. Also, even
Black Bottom August Wilson introduces the importance of Christianity in African-American lives, especially in the characters of Toledo, Cutler, and Levee in the play "Ma Rainey's Black Bottom." This play is not overtly about religion, but it is about the African-American experience and cultural identity. Religion plays a major role in the personal and collective identities of African-Americans. Christianity has an ambiguous and paradoxical position within African-American culture. As the religion
Science cannot prove that love exists and yet most scientists have probably felt love at least once in their lives. Just because something cannot be proven using the scientific method does not mean that thing does not exist. The scientific method might never work to prove the existence of soul mates or reincarnation. Folk wisdom has alone carried the torch of belief in such mystical things. Soul mates is a
The Scriptures also speak of dreams and prophesies which come through God's servant, delivering words of God's will to the people Though the preacher may not want to preach these words, like Jonah, he or she is commissioned to do so or he or she is no preacher. The Holy Spirit also is the comforter (John 14:16) and through the words of a preacher, God's people find relief and
Randall Robinson's book The Debt (2000) about the condition of blacks in America, he states that the United States owes reparations to the descendents of slaves. In The Reckoning: What Blacks Owe to Each Other, written two years later, he moves the emphasis of obligation to other blacks in America. He urgently requests that black leaders and those who have made their way up the socio-economic ladder to work
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