Letter to W.E.B. Du Bois

This is written to Du Bois in present day.

Dear Dr. Du Bois,

I am currently a student in a class where we examine “Racial Identity in the American Imagination”.  We read both chapters 1 and 2 from The Souls of Black Folks over the past week.

The "problem" you describe in The Souls of Black Folks, namely the problem of being both black and American seems to still exist today.  As echoed in the words of Toni Morrison – “…to be American means to be white.”  Parallels can be drawn between being both black and American, as you describe, and being both black and a woman as we have discussed in our class.  In particular, black women have often felt disillusioned by the lack of attention many feminists have paid to the importance of race – ignoring the fact that “not all women have the same gender.”  On the other hand, many black women have been highly critical of the sexism displayed and embodied by much of the Black Power movement.  Such sentiments were ingeniously captured in Alice Walker’s novel The Color Purple, which largely focused on the suffering of black women at the hand of black males. 

All of which is to say that race has a way of complicating matters more than people like to acknowledge, especially in the this day and age.  You say that the black American “would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa.  He would not bleach his negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows the Negro blood has a message for the world.”  The America that currently exists is vastly different in many ways from the one in which you wrote about.  However, I would argue that many of the things you said over one hundred years ago still ring true today. 

When we live in a country where one’s success is measured by the zeros at the end of their bank account how can we say that blacks have reached the status of full fledge “Americans” when the median wealth of white families is over twenty times that of black families?  And that is but one of many gaps, along racial lines, which we find ourselves facing.  So I would like to inquirer about your view on our current circumstances, as well as your thoughts about what can been done to improve on this situation.    

Sincerely,

A Student