Sociology concepts and applications

¶ … Darkwater: Voice From Within the Veil, by W.E.B Du Bois. Specifically, it will discuss the philosophy behind the book, and what Du Bois was trying to convey to his readers.

DARKWATER have seen the human drama from a veiled corner, where all the outer tragedy and comedy have reproduced themselves in microcosm within" (Du Bois 483).

Many people consider W.E.B. Du Bois to be one of the most influential African-Americans to work and write before the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s. Written in 1920, "Darkwater" has become a classic in African-American non-fiction. He believed Africans should govern themselves and argued seriously for the end of colonial rule in Africa. Many of the essays in this book also carry this central theme.

Colonies, we call them, these places where "niggers" are cheap and the earth is rich; they are those outlands where like a swarm of hungry locusts white masters may settle to be served as kings, wield the lash of slave-drivers, rape girls and wives, grow as rich as Croesus and send homeward a golden stream (Du Bois 505).

However, "Although Darkwater as a volume was sparked by the intersection of African anti-colonialism and the American struggle for racial justice during the war, those concerns and several of Du Bois's original essays dated from earlier years" (Du Bois 482).

Another central theme to the work is the role of black women in the economy of racial oppression, and several essays plead for the elevation of black women in black society, and point out how oppressing the women only succeeds in oppressing the race. Mingled with these sober and often disturbing themes are essays celebrating beauty and the richness of life, and lyrical poetry celebrating God, nature, and love. These different types of writing succeed in making the book a collage of serious and sundry themes, making it infinitely more readable and enjoyable to the reader.

Du Bois writes with the elegance of one who knows he can write, and paint vivid pictures. He says of his grandfather, "Uncle Tallow," he was "a brown man, strong-voiced and redolent with tobacco, who sat stiffly in a great high chair because his hip was broken. He was probably a bit lazy and given to wassail" (Du Bois 486). These rich descriptions of people and places flow throughout the book, giving it depth and allowing the reader to glimpse a little of black life at the turn of the 20th century. He uses the same lyrical description to paint a picture of the denigration of Blacks and their hopeless lives, which led to the race riots in East St. Louis in 1917. "They saw a people with heads bloody, but unbowed, working faithfully at wages fifty percent lower than the wages of the nation and under conditions which shame civilization, saving homes, training children, hoping against hope" (Du Bois 527).

Throughout the book, Du Bois interjects his own experience and political beliefs to make his point and continue his themes. Early on, he travels to Europe and discovers a freedom and lack of prejudice that does not exist in the U.S. "I felt myself standing, not against the world, but simply against American narrowness and color prejudice, with the greater, finer world at my back urging me on" (Du Bois 491).

Throughout the book, another theme is also constantly interwoven - that of Du Bois' own anger and outrage at the hate and prejudice in the U.S. His essay "The Souls of White Folk" builds on this theme with great clarity and dignity. He discusses the lowering of Blacks in society, and the repulsiveness of prejudice because of color and race. "A true and worthy ideal frees and uplifts a people; a false ideal imprisons and lowers" (Du Bois 500). "At times I almost pitied my pale companions, who were not of the Lord's anointed and who saw in their dreams no splendid quests of golden fleeces" (Du Bois 489).

This is also the first essay to discuss the colonialism theme. It starts by introducing Belgium, which ruled the Belgian Congo for decades, until the Congo gained independence and self-rule in May of 1960 - Du Bois lived to see colonialism end in the Congo. (Du Bois died in 1963 at the age of 94, six months after denouncing his U.S. citizenship and becoming a Ghanaian citizen.) "Behold little Belgium and her pitiable plight, but has the world forgotten Congo? What Belgium now suffers is not half, not even a tenth, of what she has done to black Congo since Stanley's great dream of 1880" (Du Bois 502). The following essay, "The Hands of Ethiopia," discusses the theme in even more graphic detail; calling the situation "impossible" - due to "white arrogance and hypocrisy" (Du Bois 514).

Du Bois not only campaigned for African self-rule, he also had a detailed plan of how Africans could easily assimilate into self-rule. His plan included formal education of the young, aid from U.S. Blacks who would teach leaders what they needed to know, and "build on established foundations" of government, rather than trying to reconstruct everything from the ground up (Du Bois 519).

Some of Du Bois' strongest statements in the book discuss women in society - especially Black women.

The future woman must have a life work and economic independence. She must have knowledge. She must have the right of motherhood at her own discretion. The present mincing horror at free womanhood must pass if we are ever to be rid of the bestiality of free manhood; not by guarding the weak in weakness do we gain strength, but by making weakness free and strong (Du Bois 565).

He believes completely in the equality of all women, and feels that women are the key to Blacks "strength and beauty and our conception of the truth" (Du Bois 573). He pleads for the mending of broken families, and hopes Black men will recognize the inward beauty and strength of Black women, rather than simply looking for a pretty face. He touts Black women's "strength of character, cleanness of soul, and unselfish devotion of purpose," (Du Bois 576), and sees it as the salvation of the Black family unit.

Du Bois' themes in this book tend to hold the book together into a coherent whole, especially with the use of the fables and poetry interwoven with the essays. What could have simply been a group of unconnected discussions of then current social and economic themes becomes a patchwork of interconnected themes woven together with great skill, and the book has greater impact because of it.