On the recordJanuary 1, 1903
What if the Negro people be wooed from a strife for righteousness, from a love of knowing, to regard dollars as the be-all and end-all of life?
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois
Source
gutenberg.orgW.E.B. Du Bois: “What if the Negro people be wooed from a strife for righteousness, from a love of knowing, to regard dollars as the…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois poses a critical question about the potential for the Black community to abandon the pursuit of righteousness and knowledge for the sole pursuit of wealth.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
Jan 1, 1903
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.
Jan 1, 1903
With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…
Jan 1, 1903
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.
Jan 1, 1903
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.