Darkwater: Voices from Within the VeilDu Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
General
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt)
African Americans; United States -- Race relations
Can we do this and still make sufficient goods, justly gauge the needs
of men, and rightly decide who are to be considered "men"? How do we
arrange to accomplish these things today? Somebody decides whose wants
should be satisfied. Somebody organizes industry so as to satisfy these
wants. What is to hinder the same ability and foresight from being used
in the future as in the past? The amount and kind of human ability
necessary need not be decreased,--it may even be vastly increased, with
proper encouragement and rewards. Are we today evoking the necessary
ability? On the contrary, it is not the Inventor, the Manager, and the
Thinker who today are reaping the great rewards of industry, but rather
the Gambler and the Highwayman. Rightly-organized industry might easily
save the Gambler's Profit and the Monopolist's Interest and by paying a
more discriminating reward in wealth and honor bring to the service of
the state more ability and sacrifice than we can today command. If we do
away with interest and profit, consider the savings that could be made;
but above all, think how great the revolution would be when we ask the
mysterious Somebody to decide in the light of public opinion whose wants
should be satisfied. This is the great and real revolution that is
coming in future industry.
But this is not the need of the revolution nor indeed, perhaps, its real
beginning. What we must decide sometime is who are to be considered
"men." Today, at the beginning of this industrial change, we are
admitting that economic classes must give way. The laborers' hire must
increase, the employers' profit must be curbed. But how far shall this
change go? Must it apply to all human beings and to all work throughout
the world?
Certainly not. We seek to apply it slowly and with some reluctance to
white men and more slowly and with greater reserve to white women, but
black folk and brown and for the most part yellow folk we have widely
determined shall not be among those whose needs must justly be heard and
whose wants must be ministered to in the great organization of world
industry.
In the teaching of my classes I was not willing to stop with showing
that this was unfair,--indeed I did not have to do this. They knew
through bitter experience its rank injustice, because they were black.
What I had to show was that no real reorganization of industry could be
permanently made with the majority of mankind left out. These
disinherited darker peoples must either share in the future industrial
democracy or overturn the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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