Essay on WEB Du Bois Racial Co-existence - 703 Words

WEB Du Bois: Racial Co-existence While reading DuBois, I was struck by the analogy of the hand used to describe race relations. With a simple concept that a child could understand, the entire race problem could be solved. Five fingers on a hand that are all different, yet by working together, they are able to perform many tasks. If you take just one away, it makes it harder for the rest to due all the same tasks. The moral of the story? Even though we are all different, when we work together there is no telling what we can do. We all bring different skills and experiences to the table, and all are worthwhile. A very simple concept- yet we still have not even come close to putting it in practice. The idea of racial co-existence can†¦show more content†¦It would be unfair to suggest that the plight of the American factory worker compared in duration or severity to that of African slaves. However, the similarities are evident. In both cases, people were being exploited for their work. Whereas the factory worker received some wage, the slave received no wage at all. However, the wages being received in the early part of the industrial revolution, was barely enough to feed and support a family. Both factory owners and slave owners felt that their survival was based on cheap or free labor. In this case, I will suggest that the labor of the slave did have costs to the plantation owner, although minimal- food, shelter, etc. Similarly, cheap labor in factories helped increase profits. In both these cases, the owners were more concerned with turning a bigger profit than the well being of their workers. Lastly, the spirit and â€Å"soul† of the individual was threatened. In the Gilded Age, many workers lost a sense of their true identity, and turned to drinking or long fits of depression. In DuBois’ writings, we also here stories of the desperate slave who has had his identity stripped of him by wealthy plantation owners. However, through all the inhumane and degrading atrocities they faced, the spirit of African-American’s as a people did not die. In DuBois’ book, we read songs and stories that kept hope alive. WeShow MoreRelatedEssay on Impact of Rasicm on Idenity in Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man1293 Words   |  6 Pagesthus one must ponder, who owns and operates Hollywood and new media.† I agree with Trevor Musa that some blacks often tend to see themselves as invisible, because of a media sometimes infer that they are inferior and inadvertently are the cause of racial prejudice. Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man makes a similar connection to Musa’s statement on identity and racism. In Ellison’s book, he displays racism and how ones identity (black identity) is affected by it. Ellison wrote his novel from