In fact, we Negroes are but facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while maintaining a proper output of goods and furnishing needed services, increase the knowledge of experience of common men and conserve genius for the common weal?
W.E.B. Du Bois: “In fact, we Negroes are but facing in our own children a world problem: how can we, while maintaining a proper output of…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois reflects on the challenge of balancing economic productivity with the intellectual development of the community.
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Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
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.
Around us the history of the land has centred for thrice a hundred years; out of the nation’s heart we have called all that was best to throttle and subdue all that was worst; fire and blood, prayer and sacrifice, have billowed over this…
Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in blood-brotherhood.