On the recordJanuary 1, 1903
But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair.
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois
Source
gutenberg.orgW.E.B. Du Bois: “But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating…”
Editor's note · Context
This passage critiques the detached and judgmental approach of some sociologists, contrasting it with the profound despair experienced by Black men.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Jan 1, 1903
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.
Jan 1, 1903
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
Jan 1, 1903
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.
Jan 1, 1903
If somewhere in this whirl and chaos of things there dwells Eternal Good, pitiful yet masterful, then anon in His good time America shall rend the Veil and the prisoned shall go free.