It was the ideal of “book-learning”; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man, the longing to know.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “It was the ideal of “book-learning”; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance, to know and test the power of the…”
Editor's note · Context
From his seminal work, this passage identifies the emerging ideal among Black Americans as "book-learning," driven by a deep curiosity to overcome enforced ignorance and understand the power of knowledge.
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