The Readers Review: Literature from 1714 to 1910 discussion
2022/23 Group Reads - Archives
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The Souls of Black Folk - Week 3 - thru Ch X
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Mod
This part struck me as particularly odd. I wonder how Black readers respond to it.
Actually, I'm curious about how this book was received in its time, by different groups of people.
I found the chapter on religion really interesting.
It’s true that the myth of the kindly plantation-owning family living in intimacy with their house slaves was widely accepted until fairly recently and DuBois reflects that, but he does also mention that the lot of the field slaves was totally different. And I’m sure there was some truth to that myth in some households—proximity might not have bred respect but self-interest would have dictated limiting the cruelty toward those preparing one’s food and tending one’s person in sickness and health. The sticking point of course is that even kindness, absent freedom of choice, is cruel to the spirit if not the body.I am often struck in reading these essays by how little has changed in some areas, how much in others. I’ve been compiling a list of quotes to use in political arguments:
• “having already reached conclusions in our own minds, we are loth to have them disturbed by facts.”
• Deception is the natural defence of the weak against the strong.”
• “No social class [is] so good, so true, and so disinterested as to be trusted wholly with the political destiny of its neighbors; . . . in every state the best arbiters of their own welfare are the persons directly affected; consequently . . . it is only by arming every hand with a ballot . . . that the greatest good to the greatest number [can] be attained.”
His analysis of the evolving mind-set of various Black people, particularly in the matter of religion, seems shrewd in its articulation of power dynamics but drawn with rather too broad a brush.
I thought the sociological analysis in #VIII was masterful, the conclusions he drew from the data very insightful.
Mod
Yes, this exactly.
Quite behind in my reading but just wanted to put a placeholder in here for a couple parts that really struck me in Chapter 7:"Once in debt, it is no easy matter for a whole race to emerge"
"The underlying causes of this situation are complicated but discernable. And one of the chief, outside the carelessness of the nation in letting the slave start with nothing, is the widespread opinion among the merchants and employers of the Black Belt that only by the slavery of debt can the Negro be kept at work."
long-overdue edit: I meant Chapter 8! LOL
He really understood systemic racism, didn’t he?
Mod
that analogy to starting Monopoly with money makes so much sense. folks were struggling to succeed or just survive in a system based on reverse-equity.
Chapter 8 starts with a poetic view of a cotton field and the metaphor of cotton as the Golden Fleece. Du Bois goes on to describe life before and after slavery as an explanation for the lack of resources for the liberated population. Du Bois had conducted the first sociological study of a Black population in Philadelphia when he was younger. Here he tries to analyze the various groups. Many of his terms seem condescending or even insulting to us, as when he says Blacks don't demand better housing because they don't know better. But he also puts blame on the system (which today would get him banned in some US states for being "woke".) For instance, marriage isn't always honored because in slavery it was often broken up. He also reminds the reader that freed slaves never received money or land as they were promised. Instead the sharecropping system is a new kind of serfdom, where they can never pay off their debts to the white owners who provide the land and supplies.
Chapter 9 shows us that Du Bois, like just about all educated people of the time, believed in the "science" of biological races. He points out economic injustice in areas such as loans and mortgages, and access to the ballot box, which we know continued for decades. He says that enlightened, educated Blacks need to lead the way for their brethren. He makes a point of mentioning "the patent weaknesses and shortcomings of the Negro population". Then he goes into a discussion that could be from today. Are there more Black people arrested because they are more criminal than whites, or is it because the police force (which in the South originated to control slaves) targets them for arrest? He advises that the Southern states will never voluntarily improve the lot of Black citizens, so the federal government needs to step in. Indeed, this is what happened but it took about 60 years after the publication of this book for desegregation and civil rights legislation.
At times, Du Bois, who never lived under slavery himself, has a sentimental positive regard for the old days when master and house servants lived in intimacy. This no longer happens in his time due to both legal and de facto segregation of housing, workplaces, etc.
Chapter 10 traces the evolution of religion in the free Black community. I'm sure it's true that many hymns and practices from the Black church found their way into the churches of neighboring poor whites, since so many musical styles in the U.S. originated in the Black community (gospel, jazz, rock & roll, blues, etc.) Du Bois remarks on how "the passive submission embodied in Christianity" was approved by the slave owners. It encouraged humility and patience in suffering with the idea that someday the believer would be rewarded in heaven. He also talks about how the church evolved later into separate Black denomination, such as African Methodist or Zion churches.
Overall, it seems to me that Du Bois had some radical things to say and others that were neatly inside the beliefs of his time. What are your reactions to this section?