We must accept some of the race prejudice in the South as a fact,—deplorable in its intensity, unfortunate in results, and dangerous for the future, but nevertheless a hard fact which only time can efface.
This passage from "The Souls of Black Folk" acknowledges the pervasive and deeply entrenched nature of racial prejudice in the South, suggesting its slow eradication.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.
So the Cotton Kingdom still lives; the world still bows beneath her sceptre.
Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…