On the recordJanuary 1, 1903
They cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature.
Said by
W.E.B. Du Bois
Source
gutenberg.orgThey cannot be laughed away, nor always successfully stormed at, nor easily abolished by act of legislature.
Continuing his discussion on the nature of prejudice, this passage emphasizes that deeply ingrained biases cannot be easily dismissed or legislated away.
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Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
But whichever it is, the meaning is always clear: that sometime, somewhere, men will judge men by their souls and not by their skins.
The silently growing assumption of this age is that the probation of races is past, and that the backward races of to-day are of proven inefficiency and not worth the saving.
Such an assumption is the arrogance of peoples irreverent toward Time and ignorant of the deeds of men.