The Souls Of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois

680 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Slavery in America experiences

The Souls Of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois
The Souls of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois is a text published to explain a series of events to inform many people about the many unexplainable ways of African Americans. This story is of the coming of the strong African American race . This story is the explanation of many not easily described discrepancies between African Americans and White Americans. It conveys the meaning of many black ways and reasoning. African Americans were obviously always a race of sophistication but in its own ways. They were stomped down by the struggles of slavery and their identity being taken away to create what many other races would label as ignorance. The irrelevance of African culture in the Americas took away majority of the strong cultures sense of life. It was lost in years of slavery. In this informative text he explains further how they are on route to regain all that was lost but in a new land.

One thing that is meant when he mention double consciousness is the way one wants to be both African and American and be treated as a Negro while having opportunity similar to Americans. This is found in Chapter 1 and paragraph 4. A different way he describes double consciousness is how a person [such as a black individual] can look at himself through the eyes of others. This is found in Chapter 1 paragraph 3. Looking at oneself through the eyes of many while remaining looking through the eyes that he attains. The way a black person may change their ways for one another because of the POV of mankind. While remaining himself he has two POV’s, two ways of thinking, and two ways of doing.

They reasons the one contains the self consciousness is because of reasoning with himself and the world and ...

... middle of paper ...

...he black people. With Washington being a black person he shouldn’t create something going against himself. But that is the one of many downs of the double consciousness that a black withholds. By trying to please another to please themselves they’re harming themselves as well.

To conclude this was a extremely successful attempt of trying to explain the ways of life of this race. I couldn’t quite say we because I didn’t experience these discrepancies. These days many take credit for the things they didn’t witness first hand. By reading this it really opened my mind to things that had an effect on me, my family, and my friends and surroundings. This also explained the reasoning behind the distribution of race, ethnicity, religion, law, and etc in the southern states. It is something that I can relate to.

Works Cited

The Souls Of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois

Show More
Related

  • Separate Pasts by author Melton McLaurin

    1165 Words  | 3 Pages

    ...eir lifehave felt and seen themselves as just that. That’s why as the author grew up in his southerncommunity, which use to in slave the Black’s “Separate Pasts” helps you see a different waywithout using the sense I violence but using words to promote change in one’s mind set. Hedescribed the tension between both communities very well. The way the book was writing in firstperson really helped readers see that these thoughts , and worries and compassion was really felttowards this situation that was going on at the time with different societies. The fact that theMcLaurin was a white person changed the views, that yeah he was considered a superior beingbut to him he saw it different he used words to try to change his peers views and traditionalways. McLaurin try to remove the concept of fear so that both communities could see them selfas people and as equal races.

    Read More

  • The Book of Negroes (Someone Knows My Name) by Lawrence Hill

    1065 Words  | 3 Pages

    Aminata Diallo is an eleven years old African girl, when her life changes completely, as she goes from a beloved daughter to an orphan that is captured and enslaved. Aminata is shown in the novel Someone Knows My Name by Lawrence Hill as a strong young protagonist that is able to survive the odyssey around the world first as a slave and later as a free activist agent of the British. In the book, her various stages of her life are always connected with the clothes that she is wearing or the lack of clothes and show the degree of dehumanization that accompanies slavery.

    Read More

  • WEB DuBois's Influence on Literature and People

    1289 Words  | 3 Pages

    submissive. The snare of the snare. Washington wanted blacks to try and get along with society. trying to fit in. He was encouraging blacks to become educated in the the "white man's world".

    Read More

  • Booker T Washington Compare And Contrast

    884 Words  | 2 Pages

    He points out that negroes have just gotten out of slavery and can’t expect to start at the top of society, instead he takes a more practical approach. He proposes that his race should invest their “Brains and skill into common occupations of life” (Washington 2), where they can be successful and still maintain as much dignity as anyone else. Washington develops this idea through the use of an extended metaphor that says “Cast down your buckets where you are” (Washington 1). This extended metaphor means blacks were encouraged to make friends to the whites despite their past relations. And, the white people were encouraged allow blacks to buy their land and work in their factories. Washington continues the metaphor by saying the bucket will be filled with “sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River” (Washington 1). With this he is showing that both whites and blacks are good people that just have to be give each other a chance. Washington’s bold plan for the future is definitely slow moving, but if carried out it could create long lasting racial

    Read More

  • Ida B. Wells, Booker T, Washington, and W.E.B Dubois

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    Booker T. Washington was an African American leader who established an African-American college in 1181. Then in 1895 delivered the Atlanta Compromise Speech to an audience of mainly Southerners, but some Northerners were present. In his speech he made a few points. He said, “No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.” Washington believed that the African American race needed to learn first that manual labor was just as important as the work of intellects. He thought that until they learned this they were not worthy of becoming intellects themselves. The color line is thus important in teaching them this lesson. He also said, “It is important and right that all privileges of the law be ours, but it is vastly more important that we be prepared for the exercise of these privileges.” His opinion was that one day blacks would deserve to have equal rights with the whites, but right now in 1895 the blacks needed to be...

    Read More

  • Booker T Washington And Du Bois Analysis

    1372 Words  | 3 Pages

    In his speech, Washington addresses both whites and blacks. “I would say cast down your bucket where you are, cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded.” (Washington, Atlanta Compromise, pg.2). This quote is a good indicator of Washington’s ideology on black progression in American society. Essentially, the quote is addressing African-Americans to try and make the best of their situation because their situation is much better than what it would have been thirty to forty years prior. Throughout the speech, Washington maintains this tone of “compromise”. “It is at the bottom of life we must begin and not the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities.” (Washington, Atlanta Compromise, pg.2). Washington argues for this workman-like approach from African-Americans throughout the speech and this quote embodies that. Washington comes from a background of slavery and makes reference to this in his speech as well. Even though the system at the time was still largely geared against African-Americans, Washington advocates for blacks to work with what they have and be grateful for opportunities

    Read More

  • A Raisin in the Sun: The Duality of African-America, George Murchison and Joseph Asagai

    1367 Words  | 3 Pages

    “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. One ever feels his twoness, – an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.” (Dubois 694).

    Read More

  • Booker T Washington The Future Of The American Negro

    787 Words  | 2 Pages

    His argument was simple the South as well as the North, the entire nation to be exact was responsible of resolving the educational problems in the South. In the video, Booker T. Washington vs. W.E.B Dubois , a secondary source due to the fact that the speaker didn’t not live in the time period and that the information provided by him was likely gotten from other sources, the reader speaks of Washington as a man who was born into slavery and spend his entire childhood as a slave . He received a child

    Read More

  • Booker T Washington's Views Of Booker T. Washington

    744 Words  | 2 Pages

    Dubois provides more details on the whole idea behind the thinking of this scholar and his vision for his people. Per this document, Washington’s speech seems to have shocked the nation to hear a Negro man encouraging his community to work together with the whites with goals of financial security. A first, many Negros struggled with supporting Booker’s vision of the black community not focusing on racial equality but working to gain financial freedoms but eventually it won “the admiration of the North and silenced the Negroes themselves.” Race relations amongst the blacks and whites were filled with a lot of tension which was all related to the little rights afforded to the blacks and the racial inequalities/injustices faced by blacks in

    Read More

  • The Souls Of Black Folk by Du Bois

    1584 Words  | 4 Pages

    In Du Bois' "Forethought" to his essay collection, The Souls of Black Folk, he entreats the reader to receive his book in an attempt to understand the world of African Americans—in effect the "souls of black folk." Implicit in this appeal is the assumption that the author is capable of representing an entire "people." This presumption comes out of Du Bois' own dual nature as a black man who has lived in the South for a time, yet who is Harvard-educated and cultured in Europe. Du Bois illustrates the duality or "two-ness," which is the function of his central metaphor, the "veil" that hangs between white America and black; as an African American, he is by definition a participant in two worlds. The form of the text makes evident the author's duality: Du Bois shuttles between voices and media to express this quality of being divided, both for himself as an individual, and for his "people" as a whole. In relaying the story of African-American people, he relies on his own experience and voice and in so doing creates the narrative. Hence the work is as much the story of his soul as it is about the souls of all black folk. Du Bois epitomizes the inseparability of the personal and the political; through the text of The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois straddles two worlds and narrates his own experience.

    Read More

  • The Souls Of Black Folks John Dubois Analysis

    82 Words  | 1 Pages

    In his book The Souls of Black Folks, he expressed his sadness, rage, and frustration with the hardships that black people encountered

    Read More

  • Overview of African-American Culture

    1882 Words  | 4 Pages

    It must be noted that for the purpose of avoiding redundancy, the author has chosen to use the terms African-American and black synonymously to reference the culture, which...

    Read More

  • How It Feels To Be Colored Me By Zora Neale Hurston

    1002 Words  | 3 Pages

    In "How It Feels to Be Colored Me," Zora Neale Hurston describes her experiences as an African American woman in early 20th Century America. She describes people as different colored bags, all of which are filled with the random bits of things that make up life. Zora’s claim is valid because I think everyone should remain themselves regardless of where or what situation you are in. Similarly, I was discriminated against based on my race since I did not sound like a native speaker. Therefore, I felt a little uncomfortable when surrounded by white people.

    Read More

  • Of Booker T Washington And Others Summary

    804 Words  | 2 Pages

    In 1903 black leader and intellectual W.E.B. Du Bois wrote an essay in his collection The Souls of Black Folk with the title “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others.” Both Washington and Du Bois were leaders of the black community in the 19th and 20th century, even though they both wanted to see the same outcome for black Americans, they disagreed on strategies to help achieve black social and economic progress. History shows that W.E.B Du Bois was correct in racial equality would only be achieved through politics and higher education of the African American youth.

    Read More

  • African Psychology

    657 Words  | 2 Pages

    Black Consciousness has been defined as an attitude of the mind and a way of life. Therefore, the purpose of teaching Black Consciousness was to conquer feelings of black inferiority and replace it with a new solid social identity which encouraged black pride and independence from white oppression. Africans should reject the myths from which Apartheid was conceived, where blacks were depicted as inferior, savage, simple and having a primitive culture which needed to be modernized. Rather blacks should believe in their true identity of being survivors with the utmost human dignity. Black people needed to become aware of their collective power both economically and politically. People of African descent must create their own value system, where they were self-defined not defined by white superiors.

    Read More

More about The Souls Of Black Folks by W. E. B. Du Bois

Open Document