This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.
Du Bois here reflects on the profound and detrimental psychological and social effects of the internal conflict caused by "double aims" on Black Americans.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
In song and exhortation swelled one refrain—Liberty; in his tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in his right hand.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.
He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.