They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way, eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?
This passage describes the indirect and often awkward ways white people would approach Du Bois about his racial identity.
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The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.
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.