In Central Park I have seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage because black folk rode by in a motor car.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “In Central Park I have seen the upper lip of a quiet, peaceful man curl back in a tigerish snarl of rage because black…”
Editor's note · Context
Here, Du Bois describes the visceral reactions of white individuals to the presence of Black people, showcasing deep-seated racism.
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Alas, with the years all this fine contempt began to fade; for the words I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.
Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people,—a disappointment all the more bitter because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a…
Away with the black man’s ballot, by force or fraud,—and behold the suicide of a race!
Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast veil.