And yet, by the irony of fate, nothing has more effectually made this programme seem hopeless than the recent course of the United States toward weaker and darker peoples in the West Indies, Hawaii, and the Philippines,—for where in the world may we go and be safe from lying and brute force?
This passage from "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others" connects the challenges faced by Black Americans to the broader context of American imperialism and global racial injustice.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
To him, so far as he thought and dreamed, slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes…
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.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.