The Souls of Black Folk Chapter I Summary & Analysis

I. Of Our Spiritual Strivings

Summary

Du Bois says that there is an unasked question among Black people: How does it feel to be a problem? Instead of actually asking, people will say to him, “I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern outrages make your blood boil?” Du Bois recalls the first time that he noticed that he was different, when one of his elementary classmates refuses a card from him. He then describes being “shut out from their world by a vast veil.” He says that afterward, he had no desire to tear down or pass through that veil, but instead, he held everyone on the other side (white society), in contempt and lived “above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows.” He describes being pleased by earning better grades and running faster than the other children. His contempt, however, fades as within several years, the white students have opportunities that he does not.

Du Bois describes the other Black students, who are less affected by the differences, who either become flattering and subservient to white society or develop hatred for it. He then describes how he and the Black students are metaphorically imprisoned by white society. He states that there is a unique existence for Black people, that they live in a “double-consciousness,” that Black people will always look at themselves from the perspective of white society. He elaborates on the challenges that Black individuals face working under “double aims,” trying to appease white society and escaping white contempt, while trying to stay true to his/her own people.

After Emancipation, Black society attained progress through voting rights and education. The end of slavery, however, did not solve many of the problems and prejudices Du Bois describes the challenges that Black people face, 40 years after Emancipation from slavery, that “the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land.” Du Bois states that education “changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect.” Beyond knowledge, education helped Black individuals to reshape how they looked at themselves. Education further helped Black people understand all the obstacles that they faced, including financial disparity with white society, an overall lack of education and skills, and prejudice.

Du Bois finishes the chapter with a solution. He says that Black society must develop, “not in opposition to or contempt for other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic.” He states that many elements of American culture, from music to folklore, are already heavily influenced by Black society. He argues that the best way forward is to not only adapt to American ideals, but also to influence the ideals of America so that they include and reflect those of Black society.

Analysis

Du Bois uses eloquent imagery to explain the roundabout way that whites attempt to engage him in conversation when they want to understand what it is like to be Black. White and Black people live in vastly different worlds, and Du Bois’s examples show how insensitive white people can be when they seek, without empathy, to understand how Black people live. They want to know how Du Bois feels about being a “colored man” in the South, but they do not want to do anything about the situation, so they skirt around his feelings of subjugation. The author refers to the painful knowledge of racism he gained as a young schoolboy in an integrated school, witnessing white students receive preferential treatment and taking advantage of opportunities that he could not access. He calls this a “vast Veil,” and introduces the repeated imagery of darkness and light. Du Bois uses the symbolic metaphor of the Veil to show how easily a Black man may feel bitterness due to the “prison” created for him by white society. Even though Emancipation is in the past, Black people feel imprisoned by the walls, or veils, separating them from true freedom.

Du Bois explores the idea of duality as the major problem for the Black person in America. Ralph Waldo Emerson introduces the notion of “double-consciousness” in his Address on the Anniversary of the Emancipation of the Negroes in the British West Indies and Du Bois expands on this idea. The term refers to an inward duality experienced by Black people because of their racial oppression and lack of value in white society. Black people must see themselves as how other Black people view them as well as how white people view them. Because of this duality, Black people have “double aims'' that are difficult to navigate and make their life burdensome.

Du Bois juxtaposes the hope and jubilation of Emancipation with the stark reality that its promises have not come to pass. At the beginning of the 1900s, Black people are in a precarious situation where, unlike white people, they cannot ignore the history of slavery and its aftermath. Du Bois contrasts the imposed ignorance of slavery to the light of promised education using light and dark imagery. According to Du Bois, new opportunities for education are both a blessing and a curse for Black people because of their historical subjugation. Black people can see the power of knowledge, but society does not allow them to use that knowledge in an advantageous manner.

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