I just finished reading "The Soul of Black Folk" by W.E.B. DuBois. I was interested in it because of the historical perspective I could gain from DuBois as well as learning more about the southern landscape post civil war/emancipation days. Below are three sections that really stood out to me because of the remnants I see of it in today's society that continue to stand in the way of racial reconciliation. (This book was written in 1903)
"Now it happens that both master and man have just enough argument on their respective sides to make it difficult for hen to understand each other. The Negro dimly personifies in the white man all his ill and misfortunes; if he is poor, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man seizes the fruit of his toil; if he is ignorant, it is because the white man gives him neither time nor facilities to learn; and. indeed, if any misfortunes happens to him, it is because of some hidden machinations of "white folks." On the the other hand, the masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day-laborers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silly desire to rise in the world, and why they are sulky, dissatisfied, and careless, there their fathers were happy and dumb and faithful."
"I am becoming more and more convinced, as I look upon the system of common-school training in the South that the national government must soon step in the aid popular efforts on the part of the thinking men of the South that the Negro's share of the school fund has now been cut down to a pittance in some half-dozen States, and that movement not only is dead, but in many communities is gaining strength. What in the name of reason does this nation expect of a people, poorly trained and hard pressed in severe economic competition, without political rights, and with ludicrously inadequate common-school facilities? What can it expect but crime and listlessness, offset here and there by the dogged struggles of the fortunate and more determined who are themselves buoyed by the hope that in due time the country will come to its senses?"
"Now if one notices carefully one will see that between these two worlds, despite much physical contact and daily intermingling, there is almost no community of intellectual life or point of transference where the thoughts and feelings of one race can come into direct contact and sympathy with the thoughts and feelings of the other.....They go to separate churches, they live in separate sections, they are strictly separated in all public gatherings, they travel separately, and they are beginning to read different papers and books....it is usually true that the very representatives of the tow races, who for mutual benefit and the welfare of the and ought to be in complete understanding and sympathy, are so far stranger that one side thinks all whites are narrow and prejudiced, and the other things educated Negroes dangerous and insolent."
