Question

“The Souls of White Folk” is an essay from Du Bois’s 1920 collection Darkwater, a follow up to The Souls of Black Folk. What do you think is the thesis of this essay, and what does Du Bois use to support that thesis?

Answer 1

• “The Souls of White Folk” would be a powerful document if it simply stopped there, but Dubois goes further and in doing so makes this document one that cannot be read simply as an historical piece, but one that remains critically important today. Dubois turns to the question of race and, in fact, white privilege, and demonstrates the linkages between race and imperialism. He was focusing on the fact that the so-called civilized world could so easily ignore the suffering and murder of so many millions of people in the Congo and elsewhere, people who happened to be black, brown, yellow and red.
• He used imperalism and racism to make his point of colour and how everybody is being dehumanised whether white or black,