The rulers did not know or understand the needs of the people and they could not find out, for in the last analysis only the man himself, however humble, knows his own condition.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The rulers did not know or understand the needs of the people and they could not find out, for in the last analysis only…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois argues that true understanding of people's needs can only come from the individuals themselves.
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One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Many of the worst characteristics of the Negro masses of to-day had their seed in this period of the slave’s ethical growth.
I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil, to creep through; I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.
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.