Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Darkwater - Voices from Within the Veil by W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt) Du Bois
page 54 of 248 (21%)
your people,--freedom from insult, from segregation, from poverty, from
physical slavery. If the attitude of the European and American worlds is
in the future going to be based essentially upon the same policies as in
the past, then there is but one thing for the trained man of darker
blood to do and that is definitely and as openly as possible to organize
his world for war against Europe. He may have to do it by secret,
underground propaganda, as in Egypt and India and eventually in the
United States; or by open increase of armament, as in Japan; or by
desperate efforts at modernization, as in China; but he must do it. He
represents the vast majority of mankind. To surrender would be far worse
than physical death. There is no way out unless the white world gives up
such insult as its modern use of the adjective "yellow" indicates, or
its connotation of "chink" and "nigger" implies; either it gives up the
plan of color serfdom which its use of the other adjective "white"
implies, as indicating everything decent and every part of the world
worth living in,--or trouble is written in the stars!

It is, therefore, of singular importance after disquieting delay to see
the real Pacifist appear. Both England and Germany have recently been
basing their claims to parts of black Africa on the wishes and interests
of the black inhabitants. Lloyd George has declared "the general
principle of national self-determination applicable at least to German
Africa," while Chancellor Hertling once welcomed a discussion "on the
reconstruction of the world's colonial possessions."

The demand that an Africa for Africans shall replace the present
barbarous scramble for exploitation by individual states comes from
singularly different sources. Colored America demands that "the
conquered German colonies should not be returned to Germany, neither
should they be held by the Allies. Here is the opportunity for the
DigitalOcean Referral Badge