But in the possession of land overseas, in the right to colonies, the chance to levy endless tribute on the darker world,--on coolies in China, on starving peasants in India, on black savages in Africa, on dying South Sea Islanders, on Indians of the Amazon--all this and nothing more.
Du Bois points out that the real motivations for imperialism are rooted in the exploitation of colonized peoples.
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More from W.E.B. Du Bois
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self.
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.
A million black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves into the kingdom.
Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two centuries.