The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood.
This passage highlights the paradox faced by Black intellectuals trying to bridge the gap between their own community and the white world.
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The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience,—peculiar even for one who has never been anything else, save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe.
All this segregation by color is largely independent of that natural clustering by social grades common to all communities.
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius.