The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed for it.
W.E.B. Du Bois: “The present generation of Southerners are not responsible for the past, and they should not be blindly hated or blamed…”
Editor's note · Context
Du Bois urges a nuanced understanding of the South, distinguishing between historical wrongs and the accountability of the current generation.
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Hear my cry, O God the Reader; vouchsafe that this my book fall not still-born into the world wilderness.
Let the ears of a guilty people tingle with truth, and seventy millions sigh for the righteousness which exalteth nations, in this drear day when human brotherhood is mockery and a snare.
So wofully unorganized is sociological knowledge that the meaning of progress, the meaning of “swift” and “slow” in human doing, and the limits of human perfectability, are veiled, unanswered sphinxes on the shores of science.
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