We cannot hope, then, in this generation, or for several generations, that the mass of the whites can be brought to assume that close sympathetic and self-sacrificing leadership of the blacks which their present situation so eloquently demands. Such leadership, such social teaching and example, must come from the blacks themselves.
Interpretation
True leadership and understanding must arise from within the oppressed community, rather than being imposed by outsiders.
W. E. B. Du Bois emphasizes that the leadership needed for the black community in America cannot come from white individuals, no matter how sympathetic they may be. It stresses the importance of self-leadership within the black community, asserting that authentic guidance and social progress must originate from those who experience the same struggles and challenges.
In practice
During a speech about social justice, one might quote Du Bois to highlight the importance of self-empowerment.
Before the Civil War, the Negro was certainly as efficient a workman as the raw immigrant from Ireland or Germany. But, whereas the Irishmen found economic opportunity wide and daily growing wider, the Negro found public opinion determined to 'keep him in his place.'
Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools - intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it - this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life.
School houses do not teach themselves - piles of brick and mortar and machinery do not send out men. It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American.
Why did God make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house? The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all: walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the streak of blue above.
For most people, it is enough for the world to know that they aspire. The world does not ask what their aspirations are, trusting that those aspirations are for the best and greatest things. But with regard to the Negroes in America, there is a feeling that their aspirations in some way are not consistent with the great ideals.
For fifteen years, I was a teacher of youth. They were years out of the fullness and bloom of my younger manhood. They were years mingled of half breathless work, of anxious self-questionings, of planning and replanning, of disillusion, or mounting wonder.
A company is people … employees want to know… am I being listened to or am I a cog in the wheel? People really need to feel wanted.
When a terrorist attack comes, you will not necessarily know who did it. What you can know is that certain kinds of leaders will use that to suspend your rights.
One who is mild rather than forceful has greater capacity for outreach.
A good government implies two things; first, fidelity to the objects of the government; secondly, a knowledge of the means, by which those objects can be best attained.
This is the only leadership life I get, my one and only shot at following God the way I feel him prompting me to do so. This isn't some pre-game warm-up. It's the game, and the clock is ticking!
Never ask anyone to do what you haven't done before and wouldn't do again. That's a pretty fundamental rule in leadership... treat them like you treat yourself. Things you don't like, they don't like.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.