Separation Or Cooperation

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Separation or Cooperation
One ever feels his twoness, -an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideas in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
-W.E.B. Du Bois
The Declaration of Independence and the Declaration of Black Churchmen both held out the great promise of rectifying injustices in America. The Declaration of Independence came in response to the tyranny of English rule. It trumpeted the lofty goals of equality for all men, an end to English rule, and the end to high taxes on colonists. The Declaration of Black Churchmen was drafted in response to the continued low socio-economic status of African American's after the demise of the Civil Rights Movement in the late nineteen-sixties. It has as its goals: integration, an end to the exploitative control of African Americans, and the more amorphous goal of an end to the institutional violence of White America. Even though both declarations sought an end to a particular kind of injustice, one failed and the other succeeded in bringing about its goals. My thesis is that the Black Churchmens' Declaration of Independence struggles to both setup an us-them and a we modus operandi. The Black Churchmen's' declaration tries to cooperate with White America in order to win support for economic development in Black communities. The declaration also tries to vilify White America as a demonic force that for hundreds of years has destroyed the hopes of Black Americans. By oscillating between these opposite modes of thought the documents rhetorical power and tone changes significantly from the original Declaration of Independence.
The fundamental structure of the original Declaration of Independence relies on an us-them dichotomy. England is classified as the them, and the colonists as the us. The grievances listed in the document create a clear delineation between colonists and colonized. The grievances also place blame squarely on England. They site the taxation policy, the lack of self government, the tyranny of England, and the abuse of the colonists: "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations" (Jefferson 1) to justify their right to succeed. As the list of grievances goes on the us-them dichotomy becomes more pronounced until the document explicitly delineates as "us" and a "them", "They too have been deaf too the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce" (Jefferson 3).

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