|
Teachers' Resource Web Study Questions on W.E.B. Du Bois The Souls of Black Folk, etc. W.E.B. Du Bois' The Souls of Black Folk, Chapter 3, "Of Booker T. Washington and Others" 1. A large part of Du Bois' chapter consists in a history of African American strategies in dealing first with slavery and then with the state-supported racism that took hold after the Civil War's end. What basic strategies does Du Bois say have been available, and under what circumstances have they been used? 2. What things does Du Bois praise Booker T. Washington for doing? 3. What reasons does Du Bois offer for thinking that Washington is pursuing the wrong strategy for black advancement? What harmful effects, according to Du Bois, will Washington's "compromise" strategy have? 4. Though much of this chapter is made up of a critique of Washington, Du Bois nonetheless offers a strategy for black advancement in the face of white hostility and oppression. What, then, does Du Bois believe should be done? W.E.B. Du Bois' "Strivings of the Negro People" (1897) 1) On page 194, what kind of personality ("persona" is the literary term) does Du Bois present to his readers? What should readers gather about his upbringing, his education, and his attitude toward what he describes as his race's current situation? 2) On page 194, Du Bois writes that "the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world,--a world which yields him no self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world." How does this statement capture the complexity of African Americans' existence in this country? Would you say that Du Bois himself is representative of the "seventh son's" state of mind? 3) On page 195, Du Bois says he will examine "the history of the American Negro." How is his use of the term "history" unusual on this page? Where does the history he tells begin and end, at least on page 195? Why does he mention artists here? 4) On pages 196-97, how does Du Bois characterize the first, second, and third decades of blacks' freedom? What hopes, prospects, and obstacles make up these decades? 5) On page 197, how does Du Bois position himself with regard to the history and the strategies for advancement he has written about? How, that is, does he establish a point of departure from the past he has related; what sort of plan for the future does he offer? Explain also how at the end he ties the "strivings" of African Americans into the destiny of America as a whole. The following questions may help you develop your analysis of passages in Du Bois' "Strivings." The idea is not to make comments about style in isolation from your thesis. The idea is to use an understanding of style —the "how" of the author's argument—to enlighten your readers about that argument. You need not turn in responses, but you are welcome to post them to the journal forum. 1. Where does Du Bois inject his personality and attitudes into his essay? Mark passages where the pronoun "I" abounds, or where Du Bois provides details about his life. You may find it good to explain to your reader how this personal quality is unusual given that Du Bois is a sociologist and historian. 2. Where does Du Bois' writing become poetic rather than dryly objective? What does his eloquence of expression add to his message? Where does he mix historical references and poetic language? Explore the connection between Du Bois' visionary quality and his references to race if you're trying to make readers understand the future Du Bois sees for African Americans. Below is a representative passage—can you describe how Du Bois captures the mood of many African Americans before and just after slavery's end? How might you explain to your reader that Du Bois' elegance, his religious tone and allusions, more effectively convey that mood than could the simple characterization of it as "naïve" or "simplistic" that he later provides? In the days of bondage they thought to see in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappointment; eighteenth-century Rousseauism never worshiped freedom with half the unquestioning faith that the American Negro did for two centuries. To him slavery was, indeed, the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; emancipation was the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In his songs and exhortations swelled one refrain, liberty; in his tears and curses the god he implored had freedom in his right hand. At last it came, -- suddenly, fearfully, like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion came the message in his own plaintive cadences: -- "Shout, O children! 3. Du Bois is determined to convey the tortuous conditions that challenged the spirits and bodies of black Americans in his day. Try to trace the spiritual twists and turns Du Bois conveys below: But alas! while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of culture against barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the "higher" against the "lower" races. To which the Negro cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization, culture, righteousness, and progress he humbly bows and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and boisterous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint to the devil, -- before this there rises a sickening despair that would disarm and discourage any nation save that black host to whom "discouragement" is an unwritten word.
|