Independent Reading: The Souls of Black Folk William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, author, writer and editor. He is an important figure in both African American history and in American Literature, who is widely recognized for his pursuit of social justice and literary imagination. He was influenced to write The Souls of Black Folk, a non-fiction seminal work in the history of sociology, in 1903 in order to explain the problem
In this essay the question as to how race relationships in the southern area of the United States can be understood as social facts and further this essay will illuminate if being of black skin colour in the southern area of the United States can be regarded as pathological in respect to Durkheim’s sociological views. Firstly one needs to define the two concepts at hand, namely (a) social facts by Durkheim and secondly, (b) pathological by Durkheim. In regards to (a) social facts, Durkheim refers
The Souls of Black Folk and Three Negro Classics are stories of the new class of taught African Americans that perform duties. Du Bois said “I taught school in the hills of Tennessee where the broad dark vale of the Mississippi begins to roll and crumple to greet the Alleghenies” (253). That they found themselves able to ace this world but hold relationship for the untaught masses gave an illustration to other instructed African Americans of how to handle the issue of the covering that separated
W.E.B. Du Bois’ The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, encompasses the post-slavery era struggle of the integration of African Americans into a predominantly white society. Du Bois, a prominent figure in forming movements that worked towards ending this obvious segregation between whites and blacks during his time, writes to his audience through a collection of essays regarding the meaning of being both American and black, and the struggles African Americans faced in order to survive in a post-slavery
SOC101 Lestine Shedrick October 18, 2011 W.E.B. Du Bois (1968-1963) was a huge contributor to sociology through the eyes and experience of an African-American scholar (Vissing, 2011). Du Bois was an author, activist and student of Black sociology. In his 1897 article, Strivings of the Negro People”, Du Bois introduced the term “double-consciousness”, a concept I believe to be just as relevant in today’s African-American communities. Double consciousness refers to what Du Bois considered
George Simmel’s, ‘The Stranger’ and W.E.B. Du Bois’, ‘Souls of Black Folk’ pose very parallel arguments in understanding the role of a ‘stranger’ in society. In Simmel’s work, he examines the trajectory of the stranger through an abstract lens. He establishes a conceptual framework for the ‘stranger’ within society while Du Bois presents a more tangible illustration through the experiences of African Americans in the United States. Although each approach is discrete from the other, the theories behind
The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, and then started work as a professor at Atlanta University, where he gained acknowledgement for his being very publically opposed to Booker T. Washington’s “Atlanta Compromise.” When he published The Souls of Black Folk in 1903, he really began his progressive journey. Standing up to white supremacy, speaking for women’s rights, and being a proponent of Pan-Africanism are what occupied the middle and later parts of his life. He even helped to found the National
is doing the entire community a favor as well. The analysis included in this paper will allow a reader to fathom what it means to bring change about, to get one’s voice heard, and to stand up for one’s beliefs, hopes and desires. This paper will be proceeded in a manner that not only summarizes the key ideas presented in Soul of Citizen, but also a connection to past events, along with present events and incidents. Paul Loeb is the author of Soul of a Citizen: Living With Conviction in Challenging
continues to have an ever lasting impression on societies today. In The Souls of Black Folk, W.E.B. Du Bois discusses the inequalities faced by African-Americans in the United States. On the other hand, Frantz Fanon, in Black Skins, White Masks explains the inequalities that rise from colonialism. In The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir examines the relation of the female to that of the male. In this essay, I will argue that these three thinkers use variations of phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and existentialism
It appears that the color of your skin whether it be black, white, brown, red, or yellow doesn’t matter in America anymore. One might assume that this statement is a plausible one, given the fact that we have a male “African American” president, and America is now considered to be a “Post-Racial Nation” (Rush Limbaugh, 2010), where skin color is no longer an inhibiting factor. The truth of the matter is that race has most certainly played a significant factor in America’s history since the early