They neither shield nor explain, but thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as they may from brutal fact.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “They neither shield nor explain, but thrust them forth grimly into school or street and let them learn as they may from…”
Editor's note · Context
This quote illustrates a harsh approach some parents take in preparing their children for a prejudiced world.
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Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.
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.