Quote for the Evening
“‘Do you trust white people?’ You do not and you know that you do not, much as you want to; yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must say it for her salvation and the world’s; you repeat that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are lying, and miserably you sit and lie on, to the greater glory of God.”
W.E.B. Du Bois, Darkwater (Amherst, NY: Humanity, 2003) (1920), 102.
If the only thing you’ve read of Du Bois is Souls of Black Folks, then you haven’t read Du Bois. Arguably the greatest thinker and intellectual in American history (not African-American, but American), Du Bois’ writings and narratives remain powerful and poignant today. Du Bois’ personal journey–from democratic idealist to socialist to communist, culminating in his self-imposed exile to Ghana (“I am departing America and have not set a date for return”) represents one of the greatest live tragedies in the modern era. He died August 27, 1963–one day before Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech.
9 Responses to “Quote for the Evening”
“you repeat that she must trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are lying”
David, since I don’t know the author myself, I am not qualified in the least to read his possible intentions, so I’m going to ask you, who presumably knows better.
Two interpretations occur to me on reading this text. One, the more generous, is that it’s a denunciation of the misstrust we still hold in our hearts for the other race, the idea that even when we try to do the right thing and teach non-discrimination, we can’t escape our gut feeling, however unfair. That’s fine if that’s the intention. The OTHER interpretation that I can think of is that the author is implying that saying that most white people are honest and mean no harm is lying, that it simply isn’t true, but that one tries to teach that out of a spirit of idealism or hope. This is outrageously racist, but I think that it wouldn’t be too hard to see that in the text (change “white” for “black” and it might be easier for you). I don’t know, maybe I’m missing context. Any thoughts?
See this is what gets black folks in trouble and why a person’s work needs to be read or at least understood as a whole instead of cherry-picking.
Dubois spoke of a “Double-Consciousness” of black Americans. That we were at once a part of and desired not to be a part of America. That blacks have always had to play both sides of the street at many times to our peril.
In order for America to work and for people to work together blacks HAVE to say that we believe in the fundamental goodness and trustworthiness of people who have done us so much harm.
Even when honestly, understandably and obviously we don’t, not always anyway.
Blacks can’t tell the truth of our feelings. We can’t say what we really feel because that gets you labeled as a radical, terrorist or anti-American.
We can never have an honest coonversation about race because ultimately we have to play by white people’s rules and that means not being able to say to people who enslaved you, discriminated against you then and still, “You scare the living shit out of me.” Even when groups of whites say things like that to us every day.
That quote is about the irony, frustration and sadness of a people who’s voices are stifled all for “betterment” of the country.
And OMG that’s supposed to be conversation. Jesus. I need to spell check.
golden,
I can understand the frustration at not being able to express true feelings, but I guess a lot of us white Americans who were born long after the Civil War (and who find slavery and racism repulsive), it’s disturbing to think that black people would have those feelings toward us. Can you blame us for that?
I have relatives from Poland who were in Auschwitz, but when I meet a German I do not in any way connect that person with the acts of Nazi Germany and I think it would be unfair to do so. If I did unconsciously have those feelings, I think I’d still believe that I should supress them.
It’s not that I don’t feel that blacks are justified in their anger, just that it shouldn’t be directed toward our whole race. To whatever degree that this is the case, do you see any solution or path to healing?
As another white person, I just listen to the voices of other races to learn from them. I feel no compunction whatsoever to interrupt the narrative with a ‘but not me’ reaction.
C Stanley,
It’s not directed towards all of you as much as the fact that you guys still run the show.
Let me put it this way most blacks wanted nothing to do with Iraq. 90% of us opposed it. But the country went to war anyway because 60 – 70% of white America wanted to go in.
When your fate is so closely tied to the opinions or whims of someone else and even your most vigorous opposition to something doesn’t really mean anything that is just going to make any feeling of powerlessness and resentment towards tha power more broad and more intense.
I said the “you guys run the show line” to a couple of white friends of mine and they got extremely offended. They told me “you are American pal and we’re all in this boat together”. And I agree wholehearted with that statement. Where things get weird for a minority is when you see stats and polls that shows the “black view”, the “brown view”, the “yellow view” in contrast to the “white view”. Then things become complicated. Why do blacks feel like this? Are white people crazy for believing that? Etc… Etc… This shows that the notion of color-blindness is nonsense. Seeing color and feeling color is the way of the world. It’s up to we humans to deal with it in a way that isn’t destructive. Besides, we can all make little humans with each other. No matter what color angle your representing.
That is an interesting stat about blacks’ opinions about the war, golden; I wasn’t aware of that.
The thing is though, I guess even when you put it this way: “you guys run the show”, my visceral reaction is to say “I’m just one person just as you are, and I certainly don’t feel that I’m a representative of those who run the show”. On any number of issues, I also feel that my voice gets lost and yet I don’t have an identity group to lump my opinion with- it’s just me and my personal views.
I’m not trying to argue with the way you feel because what you feel is what it is. And frankly, even though the comments bristle a bit I’d actually prefer that people would talk about these things openly and honestly; I think that’s the only way we can eventually get past them.
Lynx: Du Bois is speaking of White people in an institutional sense–as in, the commitment of White people as a whole to get past White supremacy. In Souls (1903), Du Bois took the more optimistic view–that most Whites were committed to racial reconciliation, that they meant well, that with adequate persuasion and work they would come around to a racially progressive point of view.
By 1920, that hope had been shattered, and Du Bois simply no longer had faith in the good intentions of the White establishment. The quote recognizes that there is no alternative to trusting White people, but that it is a knowingly false proclamation–its a quote of despair, not anger. I think we need to take Du Bois seriously because he started out from the idealistic, trusting position we want Blacks to take, and rather devastatingly discovered that it didn’t hold true. Not every slave holding American was dead by the time Du Bois was writing–but most Americans in this era too, weren’t slaveholders or probably even descendents thereof. It didn’t matter–the arrows Du Bois faced came from a populace that, like our own, lived in an era with formal protections for civil rights and claimed an outward commitment to formal equality (even the Jim Crow south professed it). That’s one of the reasons I put out the quote–for people who have read Du Bois’ relatively optimistic writings in Souls but nothing else, it is truly shocking to watch how far he fell into the depths of despondency in a mere 17 years.