|
W.
E. B. DuBois advocated the idea of racial pluralism in virtue of which
each race must be free to strive “in its own way, to develop for
civilization its particular message, its particular ideal, which shall
help guide the world nearer and nearer that perfection of human life,
for which we all long, that ‘one far off Divine event’”
(From “The Conservation of Races”).
In The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois is
even more emphatic about the peculiarity of the “double-consciousness”
situation of the black people in America. He explains: “The history
of the American Negro is the history of this strife,--this longing to
attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better
and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves
to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much
to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in
a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that the Negro blood has
a message for the world. He simply whishes to make it possible for a
man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit
upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed
roughly in his face” (From The Souls of Black Folk, A. C. McClurg,
1903).
Links:
http://www.csustan.edu/english/reuben/pal/chap9/dubois.html
http://www.duboislc.com
http://www.duboislc.org/html/DuBoisBio.html
|