W.E.B. DuBois: The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 - Book Report/Review Example

W.E.B. Du Bois: The Souls of Black Folk, 1903 Du Bois introduces “The Soul of Black Folk”with the foresight that summarizes the objective of his collection—to impress on the globe the meticulous experience of being an African-American, forty years after the Civil War. His work comprises of fourteen treatises on different subjects, from the United States government’s attempts to at reconstruction to an argument of the function of religion within the black community. Du Bois utilizes these essays to explain how African-Americans gave up approval of racial discrimination and slavery only suppresses their likelihoods for enhancement in a civilization that fundamentally regards them an issue. Du Bois is entirely persuaded that racial prejudiced exists since United States has not been cultured on the souls of the black people. His argument is fortuitous, and this collection continues to offer imminent into the means that the African American societies is inherent to the bigger American civilization, and how the historical concept has made the link intrinsically problematic. Du Bois presents a vital, though regularly ignored, African-American history, philosophy, and culture—an informed structure for redeveloping African-American studies and linking it to the predicaments and challenges of the 21st century; rebuilding critical social presumption, and making it much transethnic, multicultural, multi-gender, non-Western European-viewpoint centered; and rediscovering what in implies to be a rebellious scholar-activist. Du Bois has been sleeted as a sociologist, historian, political campaigner, and Marxist although never an early on interdisciplinary social philosopher with solid political obligations to not just African-American emancipation and racial integrity but also to liberation of women, the working class, and the poor, and populated people of color globally. One major ideas of Du Bois’s discussion gyrates around race and discrimination or, more exclusively, the systematic, critical, and social methodical study of ethnicity and the racism’s political economy. Nonetheless, race and discrimination were only a fraction of the issue that faced fading humankind from his point of view. There were various significant liberty-denying and life-threatening problems, some of which concerning colonialism, sexism, capitalism, among endless others. However, no matter the problem that Du Bois critically occupied, it must be highlighted that his main concern was constantly the dialectic of repression and liberation that is the core dialectic and important feature of the decisive theory (Du Bois 117). In “The Soul of Black Folk,” Du Bois directly or obliquely contributes to three major intellectual currents. He donates to the concurrently socio-political and intellectual interdisciplinary field of African-American studies. Also, he contributes to the—or essentially establish—a branch/sub-discipline internal to African-American studies commonly known as Diaspora studies. Du Bois’s work aids to emphasize prefigures the contemporary tune of and politico-idealistic focus on class, gender, and race that has presented numerous modern intellectuals a trans-disciplinary dialect. Du Bois’s donations to every aspect of the earlier highlighted rational currents allow modern African-American academicians and critical philosophers to involve his discussion from their interdisciplinary positions and offers important definitive tools and discursive procedures that could be utilized in the reconstruction and reconceptualization of both African-American studies, as well as, vital social theory. The multi-methodological approach of Du Bois prefigures modern African American studies’ attitudes since it was intensely dialectical, critical of conventional disciplines’ oversight of vital class, gender, race, and cultural problems, and concerned with drawing from and donating to global and diasporan African social-campaigners and political-theoretical traditions. His idealization of the complementary nature of attitudes together with his constant focus on pan-African political and social issues concurrently puts him within the interdisciplinary rational arena now called African-American studies and dares those philosophers in conventional fields who would, within a mono-disciplinary way, assert Du Bois for their particular disciplinary agenda. Although Du Bois’s work “The Soul of Black Folk” is most often read for its donations to the account of racial discrimination, and White preeminence exclusively, he really understood racial discrimination to be among the various interlocking repressive structures that intimidate not just the souls of the black people, but also the soul and heart of humankind. As he developed his discussion, several theories and themes were either accepted or cast off dependent on specific cultural and historical circumstances that reiteratively assists to emphasize the idea that his political and social theory was intensely founded in culture and history. The profound cultural and historical aspect in Du Bois’s thinking proposes he took importantly the position of a critical social philosopher as an individual who is interested with the issues in human life and, one who is obliged to continually (re)conceptualizing the most significant aspects to human liberty and building a new social planet. Being a critical social philosopher, Du Bois’s peculiarity is certainly obvious when one notes his capacity to synthesize cultural criticism, historical learning, fundamental political hypothesis, and economic assessment with social thinking and public policy in an attempt to recognize its most capable potentialities and routes to an enlightened future, discover the basic aspects of modern society and, conveniently develop means that the present civilization could be changed to achieve these newly recognized egalitarian goals. Most of the issues discussed by Du Bois are still applicable in the present society. According to Du Bois, slavery in America was not the most horrible in the whole world; slavery did not make all life intolerable; instead, the one that classified the black folk and the ox together. Moreover, he recognizes that the current Southerners generation is not accountable for what transpired in the past; thus, they must not be blindly blamed or hated for it. Long paragraphs in this book, such as “Of the Black Belt” account on the varied states of African-Americans in the U.S., variations that Du Bois would undoubtedly ascribe to variations in intellect, determination, energy, frugality, and forethought. However, he took powerful issue with individuals who, according to perception, took the humiliation of African-Americans in the U.S. as proof of their weakness. An ending paragraph in “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington” searches to reinstate precarious facts with ancillary facts. He indicates that racial discrimination and slavery were strong if not adequate reasons for a vast position of African-Americans during the end of the period of reconstruction. He recognizes that although it is immense facts to utter that the Black must struggle considerably to assist himself; it is further a fact that if his struggling is not promoted, but instead encouraged and provoked by the efforts of the richer and wiser surrounding group, he cannot anticipate for great achievement. That is, the Whites have been inclined to swing the load of the African-American issue the Black’s acceptance and stand away as critical and not pessimistic audience; when in reality, the load belongs to the country. Indeed, Du Bois reminds readers that, the concern of race in America is a real challenge of the fundamental values of the vast republic. He criticizes racial discrimination that overwhelmed the United States following an end to slavery and the slave trade. Specifically appealing is his iconoclastic evaluation of divisive African-American leader Booker T. Washington, who Du Bois perceived as too eager to collaborate with a White bigoted organization. There is a sturdy interest with economic linked problems in “The Soul of Black Folk”; Du Bois condemns a cruel capitalism that turns people into products and reflects on how the slavery of debt transformed literal slavery for various African-Americans. Although Du Bois donations to discourses of racial issues are very fearsome, it is remarkable how much of the worth of this book, whatsoever, has nothing concerning race. Possibly, its greatest worth is to remind readers what excellent thing a human being can be—courageous, open-minded, fervent, and an aficionada of reality and justice. Du Bois’ literary approach is worthy of consideration—elegant and learned, passionate and directed. Work Cited Du Bois, W. E. The Souls of the Black Folk: Enriched Classic Series. New York: Simon & Schuster Publishers, 2005. Print. Read More