Reference no: EM131635023

W.E.B. Dubois is a very interesting and thought provoking author and freedom fighter. His work "The Souls of Black Folks" is a piece that touches on many different aspects of the struggle of African people around the world. Examine the following quote from the 1st chapter to determine the objective of the book, what the quote is attempting to relay and how it is relevant today.

"A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its time and thought to its own social problems. 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 defence of culture against 5 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 the 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."

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