Color Line

When the twentieth century was supposed to herald the age of modernity it was tripped by what W.E.B. Du Bois called “the color line” or what politically was referred to as “the racial question.” It was derived from the political, philosophical, and geographical differences between the northern and southern United States. If modernity was going to herald individualization, class elimination, future orientation, and freedoms for all it had a well-seated problem with the emancipation and freedom of the slaves. And if the United States could not protect the rights of these new citizens through it’s thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments, then modernity by definition, or progress, would grind to a halt. Therefore, Du Bois “sought to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-weight of social degradation partially masked behind a half-named Negro problem.” (Pg. 9) Some people interpret in The Souls of Black Folk the “problem of the twentieth century is the color-line,” as the problem of modernity. However, when Du Bois says that people avoided directly asking him the truth, “How does it feel to be a problem?” implies to me that what he is saying is that being black in the twentieth century is the problem. It is a problem to the government, a problem to the whites, a problem to modernity, and a problem to African-American progress. And is seems to me that only by raising the social conscious of these problems, Du Bois was attempting to build a platform for the resolution of the color-line. But first, lets take a look at how being black is a problem to the government.

Politically, Du Bois follows the color line through history and time to the American Negro where he summed up that “slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of all sorrow, the root of all prejudice,” while emancipation was to be the song of liberty. (Pg. 7) According to Du Bois, “the problem of the color line” started the Civil War in 1861 even when congress said that the war didn’t have anything to do with slaves. But shortly after it started the fugitive slaves appeared in northern lines as starving, homeless, helpless, vagabonds, and this is where the problem gained it’s legs as the blacks emerged, or a problem of emergence. “But to me neither soldier nor fugitive speaks with so deep a meaning as that dark human cloud that clung like remorse on the rear of those swift columns, swelling at times to half their size, almost engulfing and choking them.” (Pg. 14) In an attempt to deal with the “flood” the Freedmen’s Bureau was created, but which could only do too little in the hands of army officials. Du Bois states that, “it seemed more plain that this was no ordinary matter of temporary relief, but a national crisis; for here loomed a labor problem of vast dimensions.” (Pg. 16) The question arise, how do we clothe, feed, shelter, and compensate the freed slaves as wards to the nation? “the thought of the things themselves, the confused, half-conscious mutter of men who are black and whitened, crying ‘Liberty, Freedom, Opportunity--vouchsafe to us, O boastful World, the chance of living men!’"

It was clear that the Freedmen’s Bureau was going to need more provisions and enlarged powers, but then the war ended. The Freedmen’s Bureau was a war measure that was considered “unconstitutional in time of peace, and was destined to irritate the South and pauperize the freedmen.” (Pg. 23) So two arguments emerged, one that “the Bureau threatened the civil rights of it’s citizens,” while the other being “present abandonment of the freedmen,” which would lead to their “practical re-enslavement” by an angry white South. This is where the problem for the whites increased. Although the argument found it’s final form in the act of 1866, when it failed the promised “forty acres and a mule,” to the freed slave. Feeling validated and punished, the previous slave owners took it upon themselves to rectify the situation. “The former slaves were intimidated, beaten, raped, and butchered by angry and revengeful men. Bureau courts tended to become centers simply for punishing whites, while the regular civil courts tended to become solely institutions for perpetuating the slavery of the blacks.” (Pg. 30) So, “the color line” remained and segregation was persued by law in the South by the white community leaders in order to maintain control on what they perceived was the black problem.

Du Bois uses a metaphor of “the veil” throughout his book; which is the real threat to modernity. The veil suggests a literal separation between whites and blacks through segregation and psychology, which maintains class separation and deindividualization. (Pg. xi) For Du Bois this veil was unknown to him where he grew up. Then a fateful day came and a blond stranger refused his visiting card. At first it didn’t make sense until, “it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different from the others … shut out from their world by a vast veil.” (Pg. 4) He held this prejudism in contempt and endeavored to rise above the veil. However, the veil itself introduced a double consciousness to Du Bois as he walked among the whites. He said, “The Negro is sort of a seventh son … born with a veil and gifted with a second sight of the America world.” From the black side of the veil they saw the world and yet were invisible to where the whites were. Therefore they had two sets of values, one that they live in their world with, and one when they interact with the white world.

Problem to African-American progress lay in being considered individuals. Wouldn’t they need the choices first in order to be marked by their individuality? Was not the definition of “slave labor” accompanied by the understanding that the slave was a form of mute property? Du Bois quotes the bible when he asks, “Is not life more than meat and the body more than reignment?” That there is more than just the material needs but a “higher life” that needs to be claimed by the African-American people. One full of choices and interaction without a color line dividing them their portion. A “problem” that is compounded by their lack of understanding on what life on the other side of slavery required, “the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the simple ignorance of a lowly people.” (Pg. 7) Du Bois said they were conscience bound to ask the nation for three things, “1. The right to vote. 2. Civic equality. 3. The education of youth according to ability.” And that without these necessary elements for individuality a paradox to progress develops for the freedman, in which they will just be left as the “remnants of a broken group.”

Did the twentieth century become victor over the “problem of the color line” through the raised social conscious? I’ll let you be the judge. Maybe Du Bois realized all along that trying, “To stimulate wildly weak and untrained minds is to play with mighty fires,” because he concluded that, “The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon the Negro people.” (Pg. 7) And so the herald of modernity has not blown its bugle and the problem to African-American progress still exists. Perhaps, not wearing the same clothes as before, dealing with the same laws, or dealing with the same white people as before, but the African-American people are still hobbled by history. Perhaps, more readers will hear Du Bois cry and somehow an answer will be found and the African-American people will become victors over the past.