Imagine a world with a modern prophet roaming around the United States proclaim his or her stance as the second coming of the Christian Jesus. In reference to the short film called The Second Coming, an African American man goes around the town and city describing how he is the Second Coming of Jesus. As this second edition of Jesus, he/she faces, especially in the United States, ridicule and a large amount of judgement. By looking at the philosophies of Martin Delany and W. E. B. Du Bois, it is quite clear that a separatist society would result from the second coming of an African American, or even female version of Jesus. Although Delaney and Du Bois were speaking solely about African Americans, this philosophy transfers to anyone who does
In the film “The Holy Ghost People,” right away we get individual accounts of what the “Holy Spirit” is to certain individuals. One woman says the Holy Ghost guides her and keeps her going. The people are very intense about their beliefs, which comes from the religion Pentecostalism, which has a hyper focus on personal experience with God and baptism with the Holy Spirit. We see them in their church, we hear the sermon, and see the ritualistic dances and the way the prayer overcomes them, and causes seizure like motions. We see and hear the prayers for the healing of one woman’s eyesight, and another woman’s back pain. One man, seemingly the pastor, says that “if God is not doing what they ask, people aren’t believing hard enough.” Later we get an account from a woman of how she was nursed back to health as a little girl brought her nutrients, and she believes it was
David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World, but in particular, and very expressly to those of the United States of America, “promoted racial solidarity and moral elevation with fervor,” and is as much a political source as it is religious. His Appeal adamantly argues against oppression and slavery while encouraging a vivacious and lively spirit amongst the black community, in the hopes of promoting unity and diminishing the acceptance of mistreatment from their white counterparts. To convey this message, which was presented in a mannerism that was extremely radical, Walker uses the bible and what can most clearly be defined as a Methodist theology to support his stance on the issues of society.
Anna Julia Cooper’s, Womanhood a Vital Element in the Regeneration and Progress, an excerpt from A Voice from the South, discusses the state of race and gender in America with an emphasis on African American women of the south. She contributes a number of things to the destitute state African American woman became accustom to and believe education and elevation of the black woman would change not only the state of the African American community but the nation as well. Cooper’s analysis is based around three concepts, the merging of the Barbaric with Christianity, the Feudal system, and the regeneration of the black woman.
However, because of the dominant, male white culture, this very learned man and his ideas have been neglected. Even to this day, people know of him as an individual who studied marginalized black societies and an activist fighting for justice on behalf of these minorities. However, society fails to recognize the enormous contributions he made to the practices of sociology. Furthermore, in the rare times Du Bois is mentioned as a sociologist, he is mentioned as a “black sociologist” rather than just simply a sociologist (Green 528). By putting a race description in Du Bois’s title, one is simply saying that he was different from all the rest of the sociologists at the time because of his skin color. The research Du Bois and other black sociologists did focused on racial discrimination, inequality and black lives. However, their work was mostly ignored because it was the study of blacks studying black lives, which was unpopular at the time. Although Du Bois was a well educated man and an impressive sociologist, a significant amount of his work was discredited because he was a black man studying the lives of marginalized black people and the dominant culture did not want to pay heed to his field work in the early
...uls of Black Folk, the readers in the Twentieth-Century America can draw direct parallels to events, stories, and the morays of those in the past to today. The chapter "Of the Coming Of John" helps us interpret the present inequities in educational opportunities. There is also resentment for affirmative action that has been spoken by the dominant white male that reflects the court decision on affirmative action of modern time. The reader can contemplate the passage of Du Bois' essay to substitute the words "colored" and "Negro" with African-America, Nigger, illegal alien, Mexican, inner-city dwellers, and other meanings that articulate people that are not listed as a majority. Du Bois' essay is considered a classic because its' words can easily reflect to the modern day.
Du Bois urged African Americans to involve themselves in politics. Gaining this power would be essential to immediate beseeching of rights. Political association would prevent blacks from falling behind because "when the Negro found himself deprived of influence in politics, therefore, and at the same time unprepared to participate in the higher functions in the industrial development which this country began to undergo, it soon became evident to him that he was losing ground in the basic things of life" (Doc I). Du Bois also directly challenged Washington when he stated "that the way for a people to gain their reasonable rights is a not by voluntarily throwing them away and insisting that they do not want them" (Doc E). W.E.B. Du Bois goes on to criticize that "that the principles of democratic government are losing ground, and caste distinctions are growing in all directions" (Doc F). All of these political demands are comprehensible but Du Bois desired a radical change; "Negroes must insist continually, in season and out of season" (Doc E). This is close to nagging, which was surely unfavorable among primarily white politicians. The effectiveness of perpetual complaining would steadily decrease. Washington avoids political involvement which in general is a neutral action neither promoting nor causing defacement of the Negro population.
Like his essay “Notes of a Native Son,” James Baldwin’s “Down at the Cross” offers a three-part essay involving Baldwin’s personal adolescent experience, a specific event in Baldwin’s life, and a final analysis concluding with a warning to the readers. Baldwin describes a general experience throughout his life, and his sense of the public’s overall experience, to discuss the progression of America throughout history; the progression of America is the advancement of the American Negro according to Baldwin: “[The American Negro] is the key figure in his country, and the American future is precisely as bright or as dark as his” (Baldwin 340). The Nation of Islam and its leader, Elijah Muhammad, play an important role in Baldwin’s analysis. Baldwin’s early religious involvement prepare him for his experience at Muhammad’s residence, and his combined experiences instigate reflections upon the progress of black and white America since the emancipation of blacks during the Civil War.
Anderson, Elijah., ed. The Study of African American Problems: W. E. B. Du Bois's Agenda, Then and Now. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, 2000.
Du Bois opening of his first chapter with 'Of our spiritual striving ' 'in his literature The Soul Of Black Folks illustrate the soul of a black young boy who saw his life in two different world, the world of a black and white person; the life of been a black and a problem in the hill of New England where he grew up and faced racial discrimination. He was a sociologist,writer and educator; he was a controversial leader of the negro thought. Alice Walker wrote about how creative and artistic our mothers and grandmother were in the 1920s in her essay 'In Search Of Our Mother 's Garden ' Alice Walker grew up in the 1960s in south Georgia where her mother worked as a maid to help support the family 's eight children. She grew up seeing the
From slavery being legal, to its abolishment and the Civil Rights Movement, to where we are now in today’s integrated society, it would seem only obvious that this country has made big steps in the adoption of African Americans into American society. However, writers W.E.B. Du Bois and James Baldwin who have lived and documented in between this timeline of events bringing different perspectives to the surface. Du Bois first introduced an idea that Baldwin would later expand, but both authors’ works provide insight to the underlying problem: even though the law has made African Americans equal, the people still have not.
As part of this ongoing struggle Wogaman further critiques Cone by highlighting that he cannot escape the idea that Christianity is solely concerned with liberation and that without it, it could only ever be a symbol of white supremacy and exploitation. If this were the case then in a way it would imply that the message of Jesus in relation to unconditional love and salvific emancipation would be rendered false. Cones lack of maneuverability in relation to this is further amplified by his constant referral to Jesus as black. ‘’He is black because he was a Jew. The affirmation of the Black Christ can be understood when the significance of his past Jewishness is related dialectically to the significance of his present blackness" (Cone, 2006, P. 123). In saying this he is of course making the argument for an ontological affirmation of Jesus’ blackness, and as a result of this blackness Jesus has become a metaphor for the oppressed blacks of America, to which his obligation is also exclusively
“God is black. All black men belong to Islam; they have been chosen. And Islam shall rule the world” (Baldwin 319). This is the principal message of the Nation of Islam movement. Although the movement has existed since the early 20th century, it gained a lot of momentum in America in the 1960’s, according to African-American essayist and novelist James Baldwin. In his essay, Down At The Cross, Baldwin conveys that the movement reached more blacks during the sixties because time was ripe for it. During the 1960’s, black and white Americans began actively questioning and challenging the status quo. Baldwin believes the Christian world had become “morally bankrupt and politically unstable” (316), and that this opened the door to radical ideas which would have been considered madness in an earlier timeframe (316). Although he does not agree with Muslim doctrine, Baldwin recognizes the power of the Nation of Islam movement, particularly during a period of tremendous civil unrest.
The scholar was a leader in his own rights in his belief of immediate equality and contention that in waiting for Civil Rights as Washington has proposed, African Americans will face further disenfranchisement, “the legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority,” and “the steady withdrawal of aid from institutions for higher training” (897). Du Bois’s method for social equality would be later seen in the likes of Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks who fought for changes in the political system for the rights of African Americans. Nonetheless, Du Bois’s ideology was simply not applicable during the period for which it was proposed simply due to the fact that there were certain needs that were more prominent. Washington realizes this and proposed a plan that would helped the people who found themselves destitute due to their lack of knowledge and
Du Bois was a scholar activist who proposed lots of solutions for the issue of racism and discrimination. Du Bois was sort of an opposition to Washington’s ideology, as he strongly believes that it can only help to disseminate white’s oppression towards blacks. We can see his dissatisfaction based on his writing with a title On Booker T. Washington and Others. He wrote that Washington’s philosophy was really not a good idea because the white extremists from the south will perceived this idea as blacks’ complete surrender for the request of civil rights and political equality. Du Bois had a different view on this issue if compared to Washington because of their different early lifestyles. Unlike Washington, Du Bois was born free in the North and he did not receive any harsh experienced as a slave himself and was also grew up in a predominantly white area. In his writings, it is obvious that he thought that the most important thing that the black should gain was to have the equality with whites. Regarding the issue of the voting rights, Du Bois strongly believed that it is important for black people to agitate to get the right to vote. He also believed that the disfranchisement of poor men could mean the catastrophe of South’s democracy (Painter 157). In his writing with a title Of Our Spiritual Strivings, he wrote that it was significant for blacks to exercise the right to vote because there were whites that wanted to put them back in their inferior position—and it was
W.E.B Du Bois was the first social theorist who not only wrote extensively on the experiences of his fellow African-Americans, but also critically remarked on the global racial order to understand the economic and racial dimensions of the European colonization of Africa and other third world countries. In his definition of The Color Line, Du Bois describes the global phenomena as ...