The fight for true freedom for black Americans, as seen in W.E.B. Du Bois’s collection of essays, The Souls of Black Folk, runs as deep as the “bois,” or the forest. Du Bois’s essay, “Of Our Spiritual Strivings” shows that the milestones that African Americans believed would end prejudice and make them successful were based on the rights and lives of white American men. The Souls of Black Folk argues that black Americans will achieve the most success by combining their freedom from bonds, political power, and education. The essay limits itself by drawing on this point and not focusing on strategies that black Americans can take to be successful in ways that the white male race never has, and to enrich the country with what their community has to offer.
Du Bois argues in his essay that African Americans error of ways is ultimately their ignorance, because they believed all prejudice faced only came from one source. In their stride for a better life, they sought to achieve the same standing as white men, and looked no further than that. Du Bois writes:
the American Negro… thought… slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies… sorrow, the root of all prejudice… the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land… As the time flew, however, he began to grasp…The idea of liberty… Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions? Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything impossible to a power that had done all this (5-6)?
African Americans based their idea of happiness on the rights that were not afforded to them, but afforded to white men. African Americans were let down by a lack of equality and happiness after emancipation. Post emancipation, they engulfed themselves in the idea of liberty – a right which only white men had at the time. Black Americans became enticed by the power that white men had with the vote, so pursed liberation, thinking that would fix their problems. However, as Du Bois writes, this right, nor emancipation, gave black Americans the gratification and truly free lives they deserved.
De Bois implies that African Americans continued to think that the pursuit of happiness and the end of prejudice meant matching their lives and privileges to those of white men. After 1876, De Bois writes that, “a new vision began gradually to replace the dream of political power… the ideal of ‘book-learning’; the curiosity… to know… the power of the cabalistic letters of the white man” (6). Black Americans yearned for education, but they only defined “education” by how white men were educated and what they knew.
Perhaps a greater issue that impedes African Americans from succeeding in this country is that from the dream of emancipation African Americans have only reached for what white men have and stopped there. While Du Bois’s essay has the power to make any black person or other minority in America feel inspired, he provides no course of action for them to follow his thesis, which argues, “Work, culture, liberty,—all these we need… together… all striving toward…fostering and developing the traits and talents of the Negro…in order that some day on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so sadly lack” (8). But how can African Americans provide a unique contribution to their country when their idea of success and freedom is what the privileged race has already accomplished? What are the African American community’s “traits and talents,” and how does one share them with the world?
Du Bois does not answer these questions in his essay. Andi Sauer writes in his blog post, “Emerson Calls, Du Bois Answers,” about the racial veil mentioned in the essay that blocked Du Bois throughout his life. Sauer states, “It is most clear in his writings that Du Bois is not able to gain full access to the world around him, and the freedoms it offers, from beyond this veil.” It’s possible that this racial veil is not just a physical impediment, but also obscures Du Bois and other black persons in America from the freedom to imagine how the black community can have an impact of the world and see past the goal of becoming white in their accomplishments and rights. Du Bois cannot answer these questions because he himself is veiled from their answers.
“Of Our Spiritual Strivings” indirectly comments that African Americans have always tied their dream of true freedom, equality, and happiness to how white American men live; Du Bois does not tell his reader how the community can overcome this impediment and combine their privileges to benefit themselves and the country. Du Bois lays a foreground for ending prejudice that will never be actualized if it is impossible to remove the racial veil and years of prejudice which blocks him and others from seeing the distinct impact that African Americans can make. To follow Du Bois’s plan to reach equality one must remove the veil. To remove the veil one must end the inequality that causes the racial veil to exist. It’s unclear how the country can ever racially progress when the steps to equality form a circle instead of a straight line.
