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.
Du Bois reflects on the nascent state of sociological understanding, highlighting the profound questions about human progress that remain unanswered.
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The direct result of this system is an all-cotton scheme of agriculture and the continued bankruptcy of the tenant.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
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.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.