Perhaps ten per cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent are thoroughly lewd and vicious.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “Perhaps ten per cent compose the well-to-do and the best of the laborers, while at least nine per cent are thoroughly…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois provides a breakdown of the socioeconomic status of the Black population, highlighting disparities within the community.
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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.
Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.