And here is a land where, in the higher walks of life, in all the higher striving for the good and noble and true, the color-line comes to separate natural friends and coworkers; while at the bottom of the social group, in the saloon, the gambling-hell, and the brothel, that same line wavers and disappears.
In his exploration of racial segregation, Du Bois describes the paradoxical ways the color line operates across different social strata.
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So long as the world stands meekly dumb before such questions, shall this nation proclaim its ignorance and unhallowed prejudices by denying freedom of opportunity to those who brought the Sorrow Songs to the Seats of the Mighty?
Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.