Black Folk, W. B. Du Bois

1447 Words6 Pages
In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois defines the problem of the Twentieth Century to be the color-line. The color line is a metaphor for the segregation within the African-American and Caucasian community The Veil refers to the community of African-American’s in the past (during slavery), present (post emancipation), and future. The color-line is used to describe the racial segregation between African-American’s and Caucasian’s post-emancipation, and because of this divide in the United States the African-American Community cannot therefore strive to become equal with Caucasian society. The great divide includes physical separation through mediums such as slavery, the Jim Crow laws, economic equality, and educational inequality…show more content…
But as their self identity changed, their labor and service caused a “self-conscious manhood” for African-American’s, who in fact made up most of the population. Du Bois parallels the number of slaves in Georgia as millions, “a population as large as the slave population of the whole Union in 1800” (Du Bois, 70). He also makes a comparison to the rising numbers “like a snake… it writhed upward” (Du Bois, 70). By choosing this animal, Du Bois personifies not only the psychological hierarchy that Whites thought of slaves as, but also that of how the slaves felt about the Whites; a coincidental thought process of completely opposite races. During a certain phase of this history, the Civil War began and created a slight change in the “otherness” that African-American slaves felt, however, the “Emancipation Proclamation seemed but to broaden and intensify the difficulties” (Du Bois, 9). The Civil War gave slaves some sort of status for they “were a source of strength to the Confederacy, and were being used as laborers and producers. ‘They constitute a military resource’” (Du Bois, 10) and therefore could not be overturned to the enemy. Soon after, the slaves were able to enlist and “thus the barriers were leveled and the deed was done”. (Du Bois, 10). At this same time, double consciousness lapsed, for everyday “masses of Negroes stood idle, or if they worked spasmodically, were never sure of pay; and if perchance they received pay,
Get Access
Related
Get Access