Teaching Philosophy and Materials
W. E. B. DuBois, Excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk
We began our discussion of W. E. B. DuBois's The Souls of Black Folk by considering what DuBois would consider its counterpoint, Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Exposition address," about which the introduction to your reading spoke. According to the introduction, Washington's speech "seemed to many people to accept disenfranchisement and segregation and settle for a low level of education in exchange for white 'toleration' and economic cooperation" (894). In the decades following the emancipation, black Americans in the South were met with various challenges, ranging from the overt daily hostility and aggression by white southerners to the broader systemic racism that became increasingly pernicious after Reconstruction ended (1877). Washington's notion of a system design around "separate but unequal" facilities and schools and resources seemed, to him and many others, a necessary first-stage compromise given the social climate in the South out of which he wrote. Washington believed that "equality" could not be granted legislatively but rather that it needed to be earned, through years of moral uplift, work, and patience. His declaration that a rural African American boy reading a "French grammar" was a tragic sight, or that African American people need not concern themselves with buying tickets to operas, seemed to him realistic, but such stances seemed to others to be indication of his acceptance of white racism towards and oppression of black Americans. It was out of such race crises, and this cultural climate, that DuBois emerged as a powerful activist voice.
In reflecting on the excerpts from The Souls of Black Folk, I want you to think about DuBois's rhetorical strategies. What devices does he use, what approach does he take to convince his audience of the legitimacy of his claims? Out of what regional and social context is he writing? And out of what personal life experiences? How do these inform his perspectives on the "race problem," or, as he calls it, "the problem of the color-line"? What do we know of the significant differences between his biography and Washington's? And what makes those differences significant given their proposals regarding race relations?
Think structurally, now. What kinds of epigraphs does DuBois use in The Souls of Black Folk ? Why might he use these? Is the effect on his readership (and who was his readership?) one of welcoming them in or pushing them away? He uses two epigraphic tactics: excerpts from poems and excerpts from Sorrow Songs. When these are used together, what is the effect?
DuBois refers in the excerpts you read to "the veil" and to "second-sight." Also, he uses the term "double-consciousness." To what do these refer regarding the African American's experience? This person sees himself or herself through what kind of lens? DuBois writes that the African American of the early-twentieth century contains "two warring ideals in one dark body"; this person would be "torn asunder" if not for his or her "dogged strength" (896). But what does DuBois propose to do about this two-ness? Anything? Or is there a strength that can come as a result of possessing it? He contends that the African American wants to be able to be, at once, a Negro and an American": "He would not Africanize American, for American 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 the Negro has a message for the world" (897). What is this message? How does this suggestion here correlate with questions about civil rights and general social acceptance, beyond basic citizenship?
Throughout this excerpt, DuBois asserts that the African American is the "true" American. He may be marginalized on the basis of race, class, and education, but he is nevertheless the ultimate emblem of America: its creativity, its promise, its love of freedom. He bristles against Washington's request that African Americans continue to give so much up, particularly in regard to the last item in the list I just gave: freedom. He writes that Washington asks "that black people give up . . . political power . . . insistence on civil rights . . . [and] higher education of Negro youth" (906). What DuBois believes will empower African Americans is securing all of these three items. He concludes that these must be demanded.
How do we account for such differing opinions regarding the necessary conditions for the uplift of African American people as Washington's and DuBois's. Which philosophy is the one that has the most traction for disenfranchised peoples of all kinds today? And, on the basis of what does DuBois's argument gain its rhetorical force?
Click here to return to the "Other Writers" Lecture Notes page.