But the same system has in other cases resulted in the refusal of whole communities to recognize the right of a Negro to change his habitation and to be master of his own fortunes.
Du Bois contrasts the potential benefits of patronage with its frequent outcome of denying Black individuals the right to self-determination and mobility.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
By 1830 slavery seemed hopelessly fastened on the South, and the slaves thoroughly cowed into submission.
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.
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.
It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.