Of Our Spiritual Strivings

In W.E.B. Du Bois’s work Of Our Spiritual Striving he opens up about his crisis of being seen as a problem for everyone else. He asks the question, “how does it feel to be a problem” and follows it by stating that it is a “peculiar” question for those who have never been shoved into the box of a social problem as prevalent as the racism and prejudice he touches on in this piece. I found it be able to feel his experience on a more personal scale after he opened up with such a raw emotion in the first couple lines. He continues to address that he had, ” non desire to tear down that veil, to creep through.” I deciphered this idea of a veil ad looked at how the veil could relate to the things he explained later on. A veil is white, usually a bit transparent to where you can still see the other side but not in a less clear manner. Du Bois later on brings up the veil again but this time says that the, “negro is sort of a seventh son, born with a veil… in a world which yields him no true self consciounns.” I found that he created a sort of duality for this veil he continues to refer to. It made me think that he wasn’t in such of an identity crisis as it seemed. He knew exactly where he stood in relation to everyone else that wasn’t of color, and although his space was filled with prejudice and trapped behind a veil, he was aware. He continues on to speak about what it means to be a, “co-worker in the kingdom of culture” which spoke volumes to how different and various the responsibilities and lifestyles were. Not only were you stuck behind a veil, but you were merely a co-worker, lacking any sense of superiority in the places you put forth so much work in just to be recognized. The presence of slavery was the cause of all conceptions of injustice and inferiority that was shoved down their throats, and any other idea was washed out of their brains to where this, “cause of sorrow” was their norm. This was all colored men knew, and it made it so that the only thing that creeped through their veils were negative constructions of their humanity versus the normality they deserved. My personal favorite line in the entire piece was when Du Bois said, ” the nation has not yet found peace from its sins… to be a poor man is hard but to be a poor race in a land of dollars was the very bottom of hardship.” It shows a scale of superiority and inferiority, and then almost screams that there is an entire race that sent even allowed to touch this scale. It strips them of an opportunity to be considered as anything of equivalence, because how can you make something equal thats not even on the scale. The nations sins have not been forgiven, and there won’t be peace on the scale until an entire race is allowed to be on it.