Strange, is it not, my brothers, how often in America those great watchwords of human energy - 'Be strong!' 'Know thyself!' 'Hitch your wagon to a star!' - how often these die away into dim whispers when we face these seething millions of black men? And yet do they not belong to them? Are they not their heritage as well as yours?
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the universal aspiration for strength and self-awareness, questioning why these ideals seem less applicable to marginalized communities.
W. E. B. Du Bois reflects on the dichotomy of powerful ideals that encourage individuals to strive for greatness, questioning why these principles are often overlooked in the context of America's black population. He asserts that concepts like strength, self-knowledge, and ambition are not exclusive to any race or group; rather, they are fundamental human rights meant for all, yet they are often muted in the discourse surrounding racial issues. This poignant observation highlights the need for societal recognition of these ideals in relation to historically oppressed communities.
In practice
A motivational speech addressing social justice could incorporate this quote to emphasize inclusivity in ideals.
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.
Confidence alone does not make peace, but acknowledging rights and confidence do. Failure to recognize these rights creates a sense of injustice; it keeps the embers burning under the ashes.
There are many examples of this mistaken idea of freedom, such as the elimination of human life by legalized or generally accepted abortion.
For heroes have the whole earth for their tomb; and in lands far from their own, where the column with its epitaph declares it, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.
Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.
I think there is a sense of being forced at this time to look at America's really large shadow and that's not all that bad.
When our vices leave us, we like to imagine it is we who are leaving them.
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