W. E. B. Dubois: Chapter Summary

Primary Source Project on W.E.B DuBois The Souls of Black Folk focus on Of our Spiritual Strivings
In Of Our Spiritual Striving Web Dubois starts off on the idea of Double conscious. Web explains it as having more than one social identity, it the idea of blacks only thinking of themselves through the eyes of how whites perceive blacks. He starts off with the idea of double conscious to show that blacks although free in the current American society they still are looked down upon and aren’t thought of as equals in any imagination.
Early in the first Chapter you see that WEB learns he is a considered a problem from the point of view of whites. He receives his first real life lessons about racism in school when a he gives a white girl a card, when he goes to hand her the card she gives him a look of disapproval and does not take the card from his out stretched hand because from him because of his skin. Web goes to an integrated school but still can feel the division among students even among his classmates who some of the youngest at the school. Imagine on valentine’s day when everyone is supposed to bring gifts for another person and you give someone a thoughtful gift but because you don’t look …show more content…
It still lingers because few have found a way to get through or over the mindset because few have ever known something different, but Web finds education to be one idea in which he can free himself. One way he also finds is to free blacks mentally is that blacks have lost their own culture and sense of they truly are during the oppression of slavery. He finds for blacks to find peace, they find their own new subculture for blacks in America and welcome whites into it. Web finds education is a good starting point because it can make blacks have knowledge they need so they can use this to show others of the injustice they