W.E.B. Du Bois
This thing is rather odd, and I’m unsure what it really does. But it cannot be less odd than Twitter, which I still do not understand.
I’m in the middle of reading (as is the usual in the Foundation Year Programme), this time The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. DuBois. Published in 1903, this beautifully written work is pretty much blowing my mind away. I may love me some Nietzsche, with him being an asshole to the world and all, but this guy is just such a contrast to read.
“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. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
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. These powers of the body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten.” (Du Bois, 3)
Sigh.
Honestly, these things just reflect on our everyday lives. What is Obama than a true combination of those two histories?
I have a feeling this blog might simply be filled with FYP quotes.
