Nor does it altogether satisfy the conscience of the modern world to be told complacently that all this has been right and proper, the fated triumph of strength over weakness, of righteousness over evil, of superiors over inferiors.
This sentence challenges the self-serving narratives used to rationalize historical injustices and the subjugation of certain groups.
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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!
The first decade was merely a prolongation of the vain search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to elude their grasp,—like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp, maddening and misleading the headless host.
But they should not keep these prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them.
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…