The United States had invited the world to join her in denouncing the slave-trade as piracy; yet, when such a pirate was waylaid by an English vessel, the United States complained or demanded reparation.
Du Bois points out the hypocrisy of the United States in denouncing the slave trade while simultaneously demanding reparations for actions taken against it.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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.
Thus we have two great and hardly reconcilable streams of thought and ethical strivings; the danger of the one lies in anarchy, that of the other in hypocrisy.
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.