And if in just fury you accuse their vagabonds of violating women, they also in fury quite as just may reply: The rape which your gentlemen have done against helpless black women in defiance of your own laws is written on the foreheads of two millions of mulattoes, and written in ineffaceable blood.
Du Bois presents a forceful counter-accusation from Black people, highlighting the widespread sexual violence committed by white men against Black women, evidenced by the existence of mulatto children.
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But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
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The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.