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The author characterizes the obsession with whiteness and the immorality that it inspires in the treatment of blacks as being (ironically) responsible for the "shriveling and dying" of white souls. He also describes how as a black person, he has an unfiltered view into the naked truth of the character of many white people. Since white people regard blacks as completely inconsequential, they routinely suspend their normal efforts to compose themselves as they wish others to see them. Because blacks are not worth the effort of manners, or courtesy, or conversation, white people actually reveal more about who (and what) they really are underneath the usual veil of social politeness or conventions in the presence of blacks.
The author goes on to explain how the preoccupation with white supremacy also succeeded in undermining the integrity of modern science in the effort to justify the differential treatment of the races in scientific principles by suppressing evidence, lying, misquoting authority, and deliberately distorting facts. Similarly, while America "should shine" in the area of social study, the world of American academia (presumably) "has done nothing" to refute the patently absurd and thoroughly immoral lies that support racial inequality, prejudice, persecution, and abuse.
Perhaps the most dramatic point in that regard is the manner in which DuBois raises the incompatibility of racial prejudice and its social consequences and concepts of...
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
WEB DuBois of Our Spiritual Strivings In the first chapter of the Souls of Black Folk, DuBois presents one of the main arguments of the book. That is, the notion of double-consciousness or veiled consciousness. According to DuBois, "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
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. (pp. 8-9) Evocative here is the constraint of prejudice that denigrates the target into a victim and that exacerbates the surface malice of prejudice by humiliating the victim and having the potential
Works Cited Aptheker, a. (Ed.)the Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960 by W.E.B. DuBois. Amherst, Massachusetts: The University of Amherst Press, 1973, Booker T. Washington Delivers the 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech." Retrieved April 27, 2005, at http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/39/. Du Bois, W.E.B. From the Souls of Black Folk. In the Harper American Literature, Vol. 2, 2nd Ed. Donald McQuade et al. (Eds.). New York: Longman, 1993. 783-803. Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and
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
Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois The Theme of Double-Consciousness in The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois In his literary work, The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois discusses the history of the enslavement and struggle of black Americans in the American society for years. In this essay, Du Bois talks about the glorious history, and gradual decline of the black American race as they
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