![]() ![]() This state is created by the daily challenge blacks face as they attempt to assimilate into a dominant white culture, while simultaneously trying to maintain a sense of pride in their own black heritage and identity. Exploring The Ideas The term “double consciousness” describes the fractured mental state of African Americans. ![]() ![]() Washington * -he argues that African Americans must engage in a social struggle which he hopes will one day bring about civic equality, the right to vote, equal education and the establishment of a meritocracy in which people are judged on their abilities alone. He emphasizes the importance of black leadership and- in contrast to another prominent black political figure, Booker T. But the author is also optimistic about the struggle against oppression. It is at this point that he introduces the two most important concepts of the text: double consciousness and the metaphor of the veil. Du Bois describes how slavery and the Jim Crow laws create a deeply engrained condition in the minds of African Americans. At this point he stresses the strong link between racism and capitalism. The essays gathered here will therefore serve as the essential reference for those seeking to understand the most profound registers of this major American thinker.Section 2: Influences Module 5: Main Ideas 35 The author then answers: “To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” 4 Du Bois then discusses the legacy of the Civil War, * the Emancipation Proclamation, * the period of Reconstruction * and segregation and inequality implemented by the Jim Crow * laws. They close with Du Bois’s realization that the commitments orienting his work and intellectual practice demanded that he move beyond the institutional frames for the practice of the human sciences.The ideas developed in these early essays remained the fundamental matrix for the ongoing development of Du Bois’s thought. At their center is the moment of Du Bois’s first full, self-reflexive formulation of a sense of vocation: as a student and scholar in the pursuit of the human sciences (in their still-nascent disciplinary organization-that is, the institutionalization of a generalized “sociology” or general “ethnology”), as they could be brought to bear on the study of the situation of the so-called Negro question in the United States in all of its multiply refracting dimensions. Copious annotation affords both student and mature scholar an unprecedented grasp of the range and depth of Du Bois’s everyday intellectual and scholarly reference.These essays commence at the moment of Du Bois’s return to the United States from two years of graduate-level study in Europe at the University of Berlin. ![]() Indeed, the essays constitute an essential companion to Du Bois’s masterpiece published in 1903 as The Souls of Black Folk.The collection is based on two editorial principles: presenting the essays in their entirety and in strict chronological order. They show the first formulations of some of his most famous ideas, namely, “the veil,” “double-consciousness,” and the “problem of the color line.” Moreover, the deep historical sense of the formation of the modern world that informs Du Bois’s thought and gave rise to his understanding of “the problem of the color line” is on display here. This volume assembles essential essays-some published only posthumously, others obscure, another only recently translated-by W. ![]()
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