Aston 1
Bryce Aston Professor Wolfson ENGL 346-01 19 April 2018
Speaking the Unspoken Problem “He began to have a dim feeling that, to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another. For the first time he sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; without a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or savings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed, skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships.” - W.E.B Du Bois, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings”
W.E.B Du Bois was not afraid to speak taboo truths. This much is clear in his piece “Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” from The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois, from the first page of this essay, addresses the paradox of being asked something that really means something else - of being asked, indirectly and delicately, how it feels “to be a problem” (1). Du Bois does not let this vagueness and avoidance go. Instead, in this particular passage, as he describes the inequity that persisted and mutated after Emancipation, he alludes to this vagueness in a mockery of those who dance around the real problem. With intentionally vague wording and repetitive juxtaposing sentence structure, Du Bois attacks the disparity between white and Black experiences post-
Aston 2
Emancipation, which in turn cements his disgust for the polite coded language used to discuss racial hierarchies. Du Bois begins this passage with vague wording - intentionally so. As Du Bois describes how the Black man begins to have a “dim feeling” (4) that he should not find his place in America by conforming to whiteness, he conjures an image of a group of people who have been told their whole lives that they are inherently worthless, who are now discovering this is untrue. In this way, Du Bois begins his supposition that white America is guilty for what they won’t say, can’t say, as much as they are for what they do. Black Americans in this time face the slow realization that their worth is far greater than white America has ever or possibly will ever admit, and Du Bois conveys this by using that vagueness, implying that it is a dawning realization, a realization barely seen through the veil of racial subjugation. Du Bois continues using vague, non-committal wording through the next sentence as he describes how the Black American “sought to analyze” the “social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem” (4). He begins with that same unsteadiness of the “dim feeling” in the previous sentence, saying not that Black Americans were analyzing, but that they sought to analyze. This again paints a picture of a community working against the white framework they have been indoctrinated into. It can also be seen as Du Bois pointing out the education that Black people had thus far largely been denied in America, illuminating a community struggling to understand their own degradation without the academic means to unpack it. Continuing, Du Bois then takes a stab directly at that vagueness he detests when asked about being a problem. He describes Black Americans’ degradation as being “partially masked,” a phrase that points to white Americans’ tendency to dance around their hatred of Black people
Aston 3
while that hatred also remains a key part of their identity. He then goes on to describe the problem of Black Americans in white America as “half-named.” This drives home his bitterness that white America can’t seem to own up completely to the clear oppression of and hatred for Black America post-Emancipation. In the last two sentences of this passage, Du Bois transitions abruptly from vagueness to specifics, using a repetitive and sometimes staccato list format to juxtapose white and Black social and economic experiences in an emancipated America. The third sentence uses roughly parallel lists to contrast the things Black America is without to the things white America has. Du Bois intentionally repeats the word “without” as he describes how Black Americans are “without a cent, without a home, without land” (4). This repetition drives home the dearth of resources and advantages that so devastatingly disadvantages Black Americans, especially when followed with a simple, quick list of white America’s contrasting privilege: Black America’s “rich, landed, skilled neighbors” (4). The parallels of the lists, with the addition of the word “without” in the first half, drives home Du Bois’ condemnation of the state of emancipated America. As he unapologetically emphasizes what Black America is now without, he both emphasizes their clear oppression and also indirectly condemns white America’s inability to talk about the problem. In the final sentence of the passage, Du Bois’ writing is less staccato but still uses repetition, juxtaposition, and parallels to emphasize Black America’s distinct disadvantages. The first half of the sentence mirrors the second half in the phrase “to be a poor” (4). This parallelism highlights the contrast between the second half of the sentences, and really comes down to the crux of the problem Du Bois discusses in the entirety of “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” Contrasting “a poor man” to “a poor race in a land of dollars” directly points at the thing white
Aston 4
America will not say: that there is a difference between being poor as an American, and being poor as a Black American. In this sentence, Du Bois sums up the disparity in the experience of being white and Black in America by juxtaposing the single-sided experience of being a poor man with the multi-faceted, deleterious experience of being part of a poor race. In this passage, therefore, Du Bois explores with a critical and condemning eye the Black-white binary in post-Emancipation America and calls out white America. Du Bois uses vague phrasing and juxtaposition to call out white Americans’ refusal to be candid in their discussion of Black Americans. He uses contrast and repetition to underline the disparity in racial experiences. Finally, he reveals the true duality of being Black and American, as the larger piece describes: the experience of not just being poor, but being poor and Black, and what that means in a “free” America.
Aston 5
Works Cited Du Bois, W.E.B. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.” The Souls of Black Folk, 1903.