Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
The quote that started me thinking (from a Du Bois speech):
“Every argument for woman suffrage is an argument for Negro suffrage.”
I must admit, I am a victim of the general American historic-amnesia. In my general life I forget, but was just reminded in Lewis’s book, that we were two decades into the twentieth century before the federal government accepted the fact that our founding principles include women’s right to vote. This provides such a clear example of the gulf between a beautiful ideal and the ugliness in human reality. Most of us would agree the ideal the United States was founded upon is beautiful: just, equal treatment for all individuals regardless of factors of race, gender, age etc. Yet just below the mythic, white-wigged surface is the history of those not white, male and well-off demanding the justice and equality promised yet withheld. Demands all too frequently met with ignorance, hate and violence. It makes you appreciate the Platonic duality: one, there is an Ideal realm where truth resides permanent and incorruptible vs. two, mundane reality of flesh and body, an imperfect corrupt version of that Ideal. I suppose as citizens we need to hold in mind the beautiful ideal, uncover the ugly reality, and make decisions to bring all that potential beauty closer to us all.
Showing posts with label W.E.B. Du Bois. Show all posts
Showing posts with label W.E.B. Du Bois. Show all posts
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Du Bois Again
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I'm not sure why the descriptions of southern racism are hitting me so profoundly as I continue to read Lewis's biography. I have encountered descriptions of these actrosities before. Perhaps it is because in the context of this book I have come to know Du Bois and his family, therefore the victims are literary friends. Yet it is dissimliar from such descriptions in fictions having the added bite of being real. Whatever it may be here is bit of what captured my mind and emotions with indignation today:
"Walking the two mile stretch to downtown Atlanta becuase she (Du Bois's wife) ... refused to patronize the segregated transit system. It galled her to have to wait until every white customer had been served before a drawling department-store clerk deigned to wait on her. Along her route there was not a single water-fountain or park bench lawfull permitted to Negroes. "
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I'm not sure why the descriptions of southern racism are hitting me so profoundly as I continue to read Lewis's biography. I have encountered descriptions of these actrosities before. Perhaps it is because in the context of this book I have come to know Du Bois and his family, therefore the victims are literary friends. Yet it is dissimliar from such descriptions in fictions having the added bite of being real. Whatever it may be here is bit of what captured my mind and emotions with indignation today:
"Walking the two mile stretch to downtown Atlanta becuase she (Du Bois's wife) ... refused to patronize the segregated transit system. It galled her to have to wait until every white customer had been served before a drawling department-store clerk deigned to wait on her. Along her route there was not a single water-fountain or park bench lawfull permitted to Negroes. "
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Du Bois, 3
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
Well, I remain fascinated with this book for the 3rd consecutive entry.
I feel a bit naïve at my level of shocked indignation toward the discrimination of and racist beliefs about African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, revealed by Lewis in his biography. I supposed since I came of consciousness after the 1960s civil rights struggles it seems impossible that certain assumption which seem unquestionable, such as African-Americans should have “full citizenship rights”, were in fact radical ideas within the African-American leadership in 1905, not the mention the contempt and disgust many whites felt toward this idea. Lewis makes this point in the section on the 1905 Niagara Conference where Du Bois finally and dramatically broke from the leadership of Booker T. Washington (who did little to push for equal social and political rights for African-Americans).
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
Well, I remain fascinated with this book for the 3rd consecutive entry.
I feel a bit naïve at my level of shocked indignation toward the discrimination of and racist beliefs about African Americans at the beginning of the 20th century, revealed by Lewis in his biography. I supposed since I came of consciousness after the 1960s civil rights struggles it seems impossible that certain assumption which seem unquestionable, such as African-Americans should have “full citizenship rights”, were in fact radical ideas within the African-American leadership in 1905, not the mention the contempt and disgust many whites felt toward this idea. Lewis makes this point in the section on the 1905 Niagara Conference where Du Bois finally and dramatically broke from the leadership of Booker T. Washington (who did little to push for equal social and political rights for African-Americans).
Wednesday, January 3, 2007
Du Bois
Media: Book
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I am right at the mid-point of author David Levering Lewis’s biography of Du Bois and he has just begun to clearly illuminate Du Bois as the founder of the 20th century African-American civil rights movement. He is just beginning to reveal Du Bois thinking on how America needs to accept African-Americans as full members of America in all their ‘African-ness.” Lewis has already revealed 2 previous strains of thought from African-American leaders on their place in America – to assimilate completely or to leave the U.S. entirely. In the first years of the 20th century Du Bois says no to both these options offering his new way: “He simply wishes to make it possible for man to be both a Negro and an American”. The book is startling in its descriptions of the United States’, and in particular, the South’s slide from the relative opportunity offered to African-Americans during Reconstruction into the rapid, ugly, disgraceful slide back toward a form of near-slavery and view of African-American’s as sub-human beginning in the late 1870s on into the 20th century.
Title: W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race
I am right at the mid-point of author David Levering Lewis’s biography of Du Bois and he has just begun to clearly illuminate Du Bois as the founder of the 20th century African-American civil rights movement. He is just beginning to reveal Du Bois thinking on how America needs to accept African-Americans as full members of America in all their ‘African-ness.” Lewis has already revealed 2 previous strains of thought from African-American leaders on their place in America – to assimilate completely or to leave the U.S. entirely. In the first years of the 20th century Du Bois says no to both these options offering his new way: “He simply wishes to make it possible for man to be both a Negro and an American”. The book is startling in its descriptions of the United States’, and in particular, the South’s slide from the relative opportunity offered to African-Americans during Reconstruction into the rapid, ugly, disgraceful slide back toward a form of near-slavery and view of African-American’s as sub-human beginning in the late 1870s on into the 20th century.
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