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4.28 AVERAGE
4.28 AVERAGE
informative
inspiring
slow-paced
Pretty boring but a lot of good insights and nice metaphors and figurative language.
challenging
hopeful
informative
reflective
slow-paced
The Souls of Black Folk
“Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalted nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare. Thus in Thy good time may infinite reason turn the tangle straight, and these crooked marks on a fragile leaf be not indeed”
The pace in the first few chapters can feel slow and information-heavy to those who may not be well versed in the history of early America, slavery, and the civil war and subsequent reconstruction period. But I promise you that it's worth it, please push through. It is important to learn our history, but it’s even better to see it through an accurate lens of someone who is living through it. Not to mention Du Bois is a masterful writer who throughout this collection of essays finds a through-line that blends more matter of fact events with beautifully written stories from varying perspectives-fictional or not-that keeps the reader not only informed but on their toes with pacing and style.
Chapters that stood out to me the most: two, three, four, six, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, and thirteen.
In the first chapter, and first page I found this quite interesting, “They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying it directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?” Which I found to be the 1903/20th century equivalent of “I have a Black friend”, “I would have voted for Obama a third time!”, “I saw Get Out like 10 times!!”.
Chapter two
Largely discusses the Freedman’s Bureau, which I admittedly knew next to nothing about. It is unsurprising to see that after the Emancipation Proclamation there was little to no thought of the infrastructure needed to properly give the formerly enslaved people their freedom. And while reading this chapter it’s hard not to feel the sting of knowledge that history is cyclical and we as Americans tend to sweep these bold proclamations with little thought to the compassion and care needed to truly live up to our claim of being the land of the free and the “greatest” country. Though not perfect, the Bureaus greatest success seemed to lie in its creation of free public schools for Black citizens. But of course, there was opposition to that initiative as well, because many whites knew that knowledge was power and even then seemed to fear their own subjugation at the hands of those who they so gladly had enslaved and oppressed.
“Bureau courts tended to be centers simply for punishing whites, while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the slavery of blacks” This stood out to me as something still true today. It’s as if the freedman to slavery pipeline of the early 20th century has been swapped for the school to prison pipeline of today.
One of the largest failings of this bureau was its separate bank that while not entirely part of this entity (it obviously should have been and it was STILL GOVERNMENT RUN) and it mismanaged and lost all of the newly freed people’s money and savings.
Chapter three
With a focus on Booker T. Washington and his contemporaries, it highlights the timeless issue that making valid criticisms of generally good people it somehow sets back the movement and progress. And that sometimes compromise and concessions are not the answer to proper progress. As well as highlighting that lower-class whites hate and fear educated Black Americans, and view them as professional competition.
Chapter four
A moving personal account of his time teaching in the south. It contrasts the idyllic New England schoolhouse with the thrown together with scraps that make up the southern schools.
Chapter ten
Not all progress is happening at the same rate, especially during such a change and progress for all. Northern and southerners walk in different worlds, and must face life very differently. Using “smarter” tactics more conducive to your power and position in society to subvert the system. Using their own methods against them “Deception is the natural defense of the weak against the strong, and the South used it for many years against its conquerors”
Use the tactics best suited to your social standing at present-“Political defense is becoming less and less available, and the economic defense is still only partially effective. But there is a patent defense at hand- the defense of deception and flattery, of cajoling and lying. It is the same defense which peasants of the Middle Ages used…”
“Today the young negro of the south who would succeed cannot be frank and outspoken, honest and self-assertive, but rather he is daily tempted to be silent wary, politic and sly; he must flatter and be pleasant, endure petty insults with a smile, shut his eyes to wrong; in too many cases he sees positive personal advantage in deception and lying. His real thoughts, his real aspirations, must be guarded in whispers; he must not criticize, he must not complain.”
Must concessions be made for progress? It’s not specific to the South, but do they need to follow suit to get their progress and foothold?
The north has many advantages in certain realms but still as repressive in many as well. The “color veil” seems to be just as present there but less opaque.
People are more easily educated and radicalized in the North but walk a different life than Southerners. And resentment for different approaches to different situations turn bitter. “They despise the submission and subserviency of the Southern Negroes, but offer no other means by which a poor and oppressed minority can exist side by side with its masters”
“Some day the Awakening will come, when the pent-up vigor of ten million souls shall sweep irresistibly toward the Goal, out of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, where all the makes life worth living- Liberty, Justice, and Right is marked “For White People Only.”
Chapter twelve
Learned more about Alexander Crummel someone who is not as well known in history but deserves more recognition. HIs life is beautifully retold in this fictionalized story.
The story is structured with life stages of temptations: Hate, Despair, Doubt, the valley of Humiliation, the valley of the shadow of death.
Crummel took his initial despair from his rejection from the church to reevaluate & pivot to decide what he truly wanted for himself and his people.
A hero not celebrated in his time, doing the necessary and important work, that goes unsung by contemporaries.
Chapter thirteen
I LOVED this story!
Knowledge and education can often be a burden, weighing heavily on the soul and your happiness. But the weight is always worth its burden.
Chapter fourteen
Recognition (even 100 years ago) of Black music influencing white music and it being co-opted and stolen. Stripping the cultural ties and roots from the origins of the music.
“Two thousand years ago such dogmatism, readily welcome, would have scouted the idea of blond races ever leading civilization.”-Striking reminder that whites were historically behind and the “lesser” culture throughout most of history.
challenging
dark
emotional
informative
reflective
sad
slow-paced
challenging
informative
challenging
dark
inspiring
medium-paced
I learned a lot reading this book and it was an interesting read. I had no idea that Booker T. Washington had such a different idea of how black folks will be accepted into USA society… that he was of the 'stay in your place' type of person. So many of the issues written about in this book still persist today.
Think I need to come back to it and allow myself more time to understand it entirely. I believe it's probably hard to grasp when I know barely any history regarding slavery and the whole history.
This was a long hard slog to get through. Du Bois' prose is extremely pedantic, overly verbose, & intellectualized. This isn't surprising given the time period he was writing in though, as he is clearly trying to impress his educated, white audience. He is constantly referencing and copying the prose of epic works in European literature. There are some excruciatingly detailed essays, which were interesting from a historical perspective, though tedious to get through. I was interested in the early farming. This is clearly not meant as a historical work though, and instead aims to be persuasive. Interesting read when considering the time period. The very real effects of racism run throughout this entire work and give it a sad, desperate air. Du Bois seems to be screaming for the white people to please just give him, and by extension, all black people, a chance at life and decency.
The Souls of Black Folk is as remarkable an aesthetic work as it is an important chronicle of American history. Although it is at times an argument and at times a history, it is always a lament - an artistic work that exists for its own sake to communicate sorrow. Concluding with a chapter on Negro spirituals and folk songs, Du Bois conspicuously identifies the themes of his own work with the laments of the slaves and freedmen who invented those songs, reaching to bridge the gap between his educated worldview and the elemental material of slavery and freedom they represent. There is music and poetry throughout his prose: straining for unity between and within races, yet thrown back in awe by the enormity of the task.
Striving to be the intellectual who sees and accounts clearly for the world's ways, and the empathic who feels the weight of those ways on the shoulders of downtrodden humanity, Du Bois's quest to portray the souls of black folk is a quest to reveal their humanity, and to discover his own. For him, the separation of the races is like a translucent veil, drawn down across all the land in such a way as to perpetually divide not just black and white people, but black and white experiences of life, or between an individual's life as it is and as it could be. It's the defining metaphor of the book, an artificial yet undeniable barrier between himself and the realization of himself. Every chapter follows the course of this veil, draped just so to be invisible yet immediately apparent.
There is much in Du Bois's account of America that is recognizable to a 21st century reader, which makes the lament all the more bitter. When he speaks of the veil that is the color line, it frequently gains the mystical properties of an eternal condition. All the more so because his present is our distant past, and his history is a history we've allowed to become neglected. Today, the word "soul" is associated with black people in a way that almost casts doubt on its seriousness. Du Bois's purpose, against the weight of prejudice and ideology, was to demonstrate that his people had souls in fact, and that they mattered.
For a nation to know its own history is to be constantly in the process of teaching it to generations of students who do not yet know its value. They cannot understand it without becoming bilingual with the languages of an array of pasts - but once they are, they can see themselves reflected, a hundred years or more into the future. Du Bois writes in a language that is noticeably accented by the era in which he wrote. He repeats a little too frequently some of the vocabulary of racial progress that we now associate with the evils of colonialism and white supremacy. But a century will render our language just as difficult - the point of understanding one's words is to get at the passion that compels one to speak at all.
Striving to be the intellectual who sees and accounts clearly for the world's ways, and the empathic who feels the weight of those ways on the shoulders of downtrodden humanity, Du Bois's quest to portray the souls of black folk is a quest to reveal their humanity, and to discover his own. For him, the separation of the races is like a translucent veil, drawn down across all the land in such a way as to perpetually divide not just black and white people, but black and white experiences of life, or between an individual's life as it is and as it could be. It's the defining metaphor of the book, an artificial yet undeniable barrier between himself and the realization of himself. Every chapter follows the course of this veil, draped just so to be invisible yet immediately apparent.
There is much in Du Bois's account of America that is recognizable to a 21st century reader, which makes the lament all the more bitter. When he speaks of the veil that is the color line, it frequently gains the mystical properties of an eternal condition. All the more so because his present is our distant past, and his history is a history we've allowed to become neglected. Today, the word "soul" is associated with black people in a way that almost casts doubt on its seriousness. Du Bois's purpose, against the weight of prejudice and ideology, was to demonstrate that his people had souls in fact, and that they mattered.
For a nation to know its own history is to be constantly in the process of teaching it to generations of students who do not yet know its value. They cannot understand it without becoming bilingual with the languages of an array of pasts - but once they are, they can see themselves reflected, a hundred years or more into the future. Du Bois writes in a language that is noticeably accented by the era in which he wrote. He repeats a little too frequently some of the vocabulary of racial progress that we now associate with the evils of colonialism and white supremacy. But a century will render our language just as difficult - the point of understanding one's words is to get at the passion that compels one to speak at all.
challenging
reflective
slow-paced