There is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation Negro.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “There is little of the joyous abandon and playfulness which we are wont to associate with the plantation Negro.”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois challenges romanticized notions of the "plantation Negro" by describing the absence of joy and playfulness in the lives of the Black men he encounters.
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Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.