But what on earth is whiteness that one should so desire it?" Then always, somehow, some way, silently but clearly, I am given to understand that whiteness is the ownership of the earth forever and ever, Amen!
Du Bois questions the desirability of whiteness, suggesting it symbolizes power and ownership.
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With other black boys the strife was not so fiercely sunny: their youth shrunk into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the pale world about them and mocking distrust of everything white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why…
The form and disposition of the laborers’ cabins throughout the Black Belt is to-day the same as in slavery days.
Fully ninety-four per cent have struggled for land and failed, and half of them sit in hopeless serfdom.
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.