If ugliness and unconventionality and eccentricity of face and deed do not hinder men from doing the world's work and reaping the world's reward, why should it hinder women?
W.E.B. Du Bois: “If ugliness and unconventionality and eccentricity of face and deed do not hinder men from doing the world's work and…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois challenges the notion that a woman's appearance should limit her opportunities and contributions.
Share
More from W.E.B. Du Bois
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.
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.
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.
He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world.