"How does it feel to be a problem? I answer seldom a word." (454) Some of us don't know other feeling. You get used to be pointed at and get all kinds of looks. Why? Because you're different! Your skin color is different! ...and so is your history.
You were born here, on this land, but freedom is not a given right is something you have to fight for.
Washington wished for all his fellow men to be Negroes and Americans at the same time, but how can they be? If they didn't have their right to vote and access to higher education. "No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem" (443) I'm not saying that working in a field of cotton is not a worthy job, but why would someone want to work in deplorable conditions for the rest of one's life? Why would you surrender and kiss your boss's ass all the time? Strive for more, always do! Be the best you can be...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident: That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (470) Du Bois quoted on "The Souls of Black Folk" I can only imagine what went through his mind when he read this Constitutional passage, I wonder if it was the same thing that went through mine...BULLSHIT! How can you and your founder fathers tell me I have the right to be free if you're selling me like cattle, you work my ass from sunrise to sunset. How can you tell me I have the right to pursue my happiness if you don't give me access to higher education or to vote?
That's why I believe Du Bois was a militant, he asked his race to fight for a better life, for something that you should have been given to them but by a conflict of interests they didn't have. Washington was a conservative, a conformist. I wonder if there's ever going to be a day where we can all be free at last...free of prejudice and hate.
Wow! It's is a wonderful post. You do a great job of glossing the arguments of both Washington and DuBois, and then you're able to explain where you stand in terms of those arguments.
ReplyDeleteIt's a interesting question, right, one that many people have the privileged of never having to face: "How does it feel to be a problem?"
One of my favorite writers, Ta-Nehisi Coates, addresses this a bit in a post, though rather obliquely.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/02/the-great-fallon-obama-potato-sack-race/252856/
He says:
"The Obama Presidency is, if anything else, a really special reality show for black people, a love letter to all of us disgusted with watching black families through the lens of sociology and "problem-solving.""