free but not free
After United States' President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and even after the American Civil War was fought and won by the abolitionist North, the black people of this country continued to be dealt with as if they were sub-human. Instead of disappearing with emancipation, the problems the black people of this country faced merely changed as they gained freedom. Studying two excerpts from the writings of W.E.B. Dubois and Frederick Douglass, gives us historical evidence this occurrence. Douglass is writing before slavery was abolished in the United States, while Dubois is writing quite a bit later, around the turn of the century. Douglass points out that there is no freedom for the black man, and thus the 4th of July is a slap in the face more than a holiday for him. Douglass understandably speaks very harshly of the American people, both as religious Christians (as the majority were), and as boasters of liberty and equality. "Your denunciation of tyrants... your sermons and thanksgivings, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy..." (Douglass, "The Meaning of the 4th of July for the Negro," in 80 Readings, ed. Munger, 240)
While Dubois' seems a little off in his recollection of modern history in his statement that, "The discovery of personal whiteness... is a very modern thing - a nineteenth and twentieth-century matter...," as it was a 17th-century matter as well, he still seems to agree with the idea that this invented prejudice is relatively recent. Dubois also speaks of the hypocrisy of the American Christian, even after the turn of the century. "We profess a religion of high ethical advancement... and not simply justice to our fellows, but personal sacrifice of our good for theirs. It is a high aim... so long as we strive bravely toward it. Do we, as a people? On the contrary, we have injected into our creed a gospel of human hate and prejudice..." (Dubois, "The Souls of White People," in 80 Readings, ed. Munger, 193) Dubois claims that what has happened instead is that "good Christians" have merely pretended that their religion and its cherished values are only referring to the treatment of white people. To this day, the bigotry that was started hundreds of years ago is still a characteristic part of American society. Though the reason for the bigotry has long disappeared, via the abolition of slavery, its tr
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 816
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)
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