Student Question
How does Du Bois refine a central idea through the description of the artisan's struggle?
Quick answer:
A central idea of The Souls of Black Folk is the "doubleness" of Black Americans and how difficult it is for them to merge their two selves without losing any of their history and culture or denying themselves opportunities, and the struggle of the artisan encapsulates this. On the one hand, he wants to escape the contempt of white people who believe physical work to be inferior, but on the other, he also wants to help his people escape poverty.
One of the central ideas of W. E. B. Du Bois's text is the "doubleness" of being African American. Du Bois describes this doubleness as a great challenge: a Black American is both Black and an American, but it is often difficult to be both at the same time.
It is a challenge for Black Americans to try and merge these two parts of themselves without losing any part of either. If they identify too strongly with Black people and their Black heritage, it can cause them to have doors of opportunity closed to them; but at the same time, if they identify too much with white people, they distance themselves from their own community and history and deny a central part of themselves.
Du Bois depicts the struggle of the artisan as being a key example of this doubleness hampering the lives of Black Americans. The artisan may be an extremely skilled worker, but if he is trying to escape the contempt of white people, who believe all physical work to be inferior, he cannot also be undertaking the basic work that is needed to help lift his own people out of poverty and ignorance. For many Black artisans, this contradiction causes them to be stretched too thinly. They are made weak by their attempt to pursue two incompatible goals at the same time. Because he is trying to do two things at once, the artisan is hobbled at both. This encapsulates the wider plight of the African American.
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