And so, too, the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not lightly be dealt with.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “And so, too, the native ambition and aspiration of men, even though they be black, backward, and ungraceful, must not…”
Editor's note · Context
Concluding his reflections on human potential, this passage insists that the aspirations of all people, including those marginalized, must be taken seriously.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.
Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness.
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.
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.