The things evidently borrowed from the surrounding world undergo characteristic change when they enter the mouth of the slave.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The things evidently borrowed from the surrounding world undergo characteristic change when they enter the mouth of the…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois notes how elements adopted from the dominant culture were uniquely transformed and reinterpreted by enslaved people.
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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.
The holocaust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old cry for…
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.
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.