Julius Lester

From pp. 16-7

Du Bois exemplified the two-ness all his life. It made him appear contradictory, but no basic contradictions existed. During his Harvard years, he was responsible for the production of two plays at a local black church: Aristophanes' The Birds, and a burlesque of the Negro hair tonic business called Samason and Delilah, or the Dude, the Duck and the Devil. That one man could be intimately involved in two plays so different in style, content and purpose would be amazing beyond belief without an understanding of the "two-ness." He was black in America, in the Western world. He was as equally proud of his knowledge of Western culture as he was of being black. He did not reject the West, as did the nineteenth century black radical nationalists John Bruce and Bishop Henry M. Turner. To Du Bois blacks would always be considered inferior until they were conversant with, and could appreciate, Western culture.

At the same time, however, he believed in "voluntary race segregation," of a "Negro self-sufficient culture even in America." He rejected the notion of many of his black contemporaries who "saw salvation only in terms of integration at the earliest moment and on almost any terms in white culture." He sought the destruction of the concept of race which conferred inferiority on blacks and superiority on whites. In its place he wanted a culturally pluralistic society in which races were conserved and each race was in a position to make its unique contribution to society without any impediments.