The souls of black folk - W. E. B. Du Bois
"The masters and the masters' sons have never been able to see why the Negro, instead of settling down to be day labourers for bread and clothes, are infected with a silky desire to rise in the world.”
I’ve read many books from yesteryear on the subject of race, and it is a real eye-opener. Mainly because the topics in which they speak about and their optimism for the future is very similar to what people are saying today, but just said differently.
Whilst reading this, I was constantly thinking, although things have changed on the surface, what about mindset?
The book opens by giving you a time frame of when the book is set: 1861 - 1872. This is prevalent as Du Bois comments on the attitude of the American people pre and post the American Civil War (1861 - 65).
We begin to hear about what the Americans plan to do with the free negroes after the Civil War.
The Union Army (the North) had free African Americans in their ranks, as well as taking in African American men who had escaped slavery from the Confederate Army (the South).
Abolitionist, Frederick Douglass encouraged Black men to enlist in the army as this would aid them in their fight for full emancipation.
Things were beginning to look up for the emancipated negro. In May 1865, a legislation was passed which on paper looked like the Americans were actually giving negroes equal rights.
When strategizing how black people should behave in order to continue progression following the civil war, Du Bois mentions things that I find myself doing even now (in 2021) which suggest ideals and situations haven’t changed that much.
"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... He must not criticise, he must not complain... With this sacrifice, there is an economic opening, and perhaps peace and some prosperity.”
As a Black man, this is how one must also act today in order not to be typecast as aggressive, and any other racial stigma attached to the colour of my skin.
So again, although things have changed on the surface, what about mindset?
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as that anger and hate was MADE to be supressed and hopefully in time it would sink away into history unaccounted for. Now the time of the great awakening is at hand, and all people are awakening to EVERYTHING. 2020 was a year that forced humanity to go into isolation and take a good hard look at themselves and the world around them. All that suppressed anger is now what is being realised and released in order to be transmuted so humanity can come back into alignment and put all things right.x
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