The Souls of Black Folk

This is a must-read, especially if you live in America.

Probably one of the most eloquent books I've ever read.

I'm not gonna pretend to know what it's like being black in the USA. But after reading this book and “We Were 8 Years in Power: An American Tragedy” (2017) by Ta-Nehisi Coates in 2019, and a few others, I'm starting to pick up some patterns. There seems to be two camps in the black community:

• Those who see the poverty and brutality and suffering faced by people in their communities as being directly caused by their material conditions and those in power. This is exemplified by Coates, MLK, Ibram X. Kendi, and Du Bois. And...

• Those who see the poverty and brutality and suffering faced by people in their communities as being the fault of those suffering in the communities. This is best exemplified by Booker T. Washington, Bill Cosby, Barrack Obama, Ben Shapiro, every conservative ever, and most white Democrats.

As an aside, it's always a lot of fun reading really old books and seeing the author dedicate an entire chapter to just completely trashing their intellectual colleagues in the most eloquent ways possible. Couldn't tweet your shade back then, had to send it through a publishing house. Du Bois had an entire chapter dedicated to verbally destroying Booker T. Washington and it's the best chapter of the book, IMO.

So anyway, I fall into the former of those two categories and this book provides fascinating insight into the failure of Reconstruction. We've never reconciled with this failure and we're still reeling from it to this day.

I found this book fascinating and would recommend it to anyone interested in a snapshot of history not discussed enough.

This falls into the category: “The Lie of American Exceptionalism”