Critical Analysis Of W. E. B. Dubois

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Discussion Paper #2 1. W.E.B Dubois is recognized as one of America’s most prolific scholars. He was the first African American to receive a Ph. d from Harvard as well as the first to complete a through scientific study of Black life in America in 1899. Today, Dubois’s The Philadelphia Negro is regarded as one of the earliest examples of American sociology’s transition from being purely philosophical discipline to one that included the use of quantitative data. In the first chapter of his 1903 book Souls of Black Folk, Dubois sought answer the existential question of his time, what does it mean to be Black in America at the turn of the century? In Double-Consciousness and the Veil, Dubois asserts that the American Negro navigates society while experiencing an internal battle. Described as “two warring ideals in one dark body”, Dubois’s double consciousness asserts that the Black American struggles with being a person of African descent born in America but has to reconcile their existence within a hostile environment that doesn’t guarantee his/her full humanity. At the time Souls of Black Folk was written, Black people had been emancipated from slavery for forty years and …show more content…

His wealth and social connections attached him to his space yet his Jewish identity prevented from being fully included in German society. This allow Simmel critique his environment without the biases of the general population. In his 1908 essay The Stranger, Simmel describe the stranger as an individual who lives in society with one foot in and the other out. The “stranger” exist within society without attachment to the ideals of the mainstream population and this sometimes causes others view him with suspicion and mistrust. According to Simmel, the stranger plays an essential role within society because his objective view of society and his unique ideals create diversity in

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