The Line Runs Deep

The story of John Jones featured in The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois is one that resonates within the core of my young, Black, Southern being.  A “good boy” in the eyes of the white people in his late-nineteenth- to early-twentieth-century context of Altamaha, Georgia, Black John is not expected to achieve much of anything out of fear that he would become something disgraceful or, one may dare say, “dangerous” (Du Bois 142, 150).  For someone with a courteous personality and skillfulness in labor, having the opportunity to receive an education is a downright waste, and the notion of rising above anything better than servanthood or equal to the norms of whiteness is a falsehood (142, 149-150).  Of Southern charm yet loud, unkempt, joyously green, ill-versed, and inconsistent, he arrives at an institution of learning where he eventually awakens to the “Veil” that he wears as a Black person within a white society and the oppressive ideals that he once received as the norm (144, 142-145).  Returning to his hometown with the intent to educate his people, he is challenged by the operations and principles that continue to keep his people second-class and subservient.  In due course, opposing those principles leads to his demise (146-153).

As a Black male coming up from a twenty-first century rural context, I have found myself to be somewhat like John in my own personal maturity and educational matriculation.  I, too, seem to have possessed the same attributes (well, maybe not the loud one), and I have been partially blind to the veil until becoming (and still becoming) more aware of it through academics.  Looking at my contextual background in comparison to his, I find that not much has changed in the world since his time. 

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Du Bois pronounced that the issue of major concern is “the problem of the color-line” (v, 9).  Of course, this ship did not roll in at the turn of the century.  America was in war over race matters only a few decades before, and the thought of a Black person being some primitive organism that rests somewhere on a spectrum between human and livestock stems from days well before she was washed ashore in a New World (9, 55-56).  Yet for the two centuries which have emerged since the Emancipation Proclamation, the words of Du Bois are still resonant: “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the [freedpeople have] not yet found freedom in [their] promised land” (4).

For one to possess a “double-consciousness” that comes from being Black in America is a realization that he or she has not yet found full liberty within his or her self and within his or her country (2).  To see self through the beliefs and perceptions of another without the ability to truly see self for whoever self is proves to be a struggle and a problem indeed (2-3, 122).  At this present age, no one should have to find him- or herself willingly accepting “the old attitude of adjustment and submission”—going along to hopefully get along and come up economically while, in the meantime, repressing dignity and human identity (30-31).  By doing this, one remains under oppressive ideologies and practices, denying the fullness of her God-given gifts, talents, and abilities.  As Du Bois understands it to be the case for his context, perhaps this mindset can be intercepted through the work of Black institutions that move beyond the focus of achieving economic status and encourage the development of a person who is capable of turning the tides of the conditions of her people for the better through what she knows and her ability to impart what she knows into others (52-54, 64-66).  Much like how John seeks to bring racial uplift by investing his education in his community, perhaps she can be a remedy to current issues such as a 48-percent high school dropout rate among African American males (“Black Male Graduation Rates”).  Whatever the efforts of racial uplift may be, however, there must also be an owning of deeds by white people for the conditions of African Americans even up until now (p. 113).  Regardless of how docile and civil or well-educated and “dangerous” I may be, the stories of John and a twenty-first century, seventeen-year-old young African-American male in a hoody are a few examples that seemingly teach me that a Black man can easily become a threat to the social order of white privilege and, thus, become easily disposable (Alvarez and Buckley).  If the possibility for ownership of misdeeds ever occurs and it interchanges with Black efforts for racial uplift, there is hope for the improvement of society and, perchance, the eradication of the color-line (113).  Maybe then can the words of Du Bois concerning the nation be a hum of the past.

Alvarez, Lizzette and Cara Buckley. “Zimmerman Is Acquitted in Trayvon Martin Killing.”  The

New York Times, 13 July 2013.  Web.  2 Sept. 2013. <http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/14/us/george-zimmerman-verdict-trayvon-martin.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0>.

“Black Male Graduation Rates.” The Urgency of Now: The Schott 50 State Report on Public

Education and Black Males.  http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/black-male-graduation-rates .  2 Sept. 2013.  <http://blackboysreport.org/national-summary/black-male-graduation-rates>.

Du Bois, W. E. B.  The Souls of Black Folk.  1903.  New York: Dover Publications, 1994.