The Dehumanization of Black Folks and the Question of Progress
What I found most off-putting was DuBois's discussion on progress after emancipation. He says that Black folks were expecting and needed certain freedoms and liberties, in order for them to truly be freed of slavery. For instance, the right to vote, have an education, and equality. However, emancipation and its promises were not fulfilled 40 years after when DuBois wrote this essay and not today in 2020. This idea that emancipation was “unfinished at best — a failed project at worst” seemed particularly shocking to me and it begs the question, do we really see light at the end of the tunnel? Along those lines, in-class Sophie brought up this idea of “non-linear” progress, which I believe was the perfect visualization to accompany the success and setbacks that we have seen throughout history.
The dehumanization of Black people and this notion that they do not constitute as a “whole being” with equal privileges to white folks appeared in each material we have analyzed this week. Starting with Pinn, they discussed how white people saw Blacks as objects/property, who were “beast-like in behavior” and an uncivilized bunch. This perception of Blacks correlates to the on-screen film, Birth of a Nation. It is in this film that the main character, a white actor dressed in blackface, perpetuates the stereotype of a brute black man whose only intention is to wreak havoc on society, specifically pure white women. These fears by white people displayed in the film further separates Black folks from their own humanity. Not to mention that this continued comparison to a “beast” is directly correlated to a history of colonialism, fear, and “othering”. When someone is compared to a beast, their humanity is stripped of them making them almost savage like. But maybe more importantly, it gives white people this perception that Blacks must be contained because the Devil has ties to the beast and that evil can not nor does it deserve to roam free.
Similarly, DuBois then goes on to discuss how Black people have a double consciousness, their Black self and the American. These two identities do not overlap, for a person can not be Black and American “without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face”. I believe that this dehumanization of Black folks even in today’s society will continue as long as this veil separating us exists. We can not be separate entities, and there can not be an inferior or superior race. It is clear that today’s society still holds many of the past fears described in these three materials that allow people to continue to perpetuate barriers that impact Black success.
