Taylor Schermer

Jessica McCallum
Honors Humanities 11
October 7th, 2019
“Of Our Spiritual Strivings​,” by W.E.B. Dubois Response Paper
The utilization of historical thinking skills helped me to analyze the rhetorical nature in
“Of Our Spiritual Strivings,” by W.E.B. Dubois. I established the credibility of the author,
contextualized based on the time period, and connected to the corroboration of future
generations to further my understanding.
I sourced the author to establish credibility, therefore validating the rhetoric of the author,
because it created an aura of ethos which appealed to me. W.E.B. Dubois was a black
American author, editor, writer, historian, civil rights activist, and Pan-Africanist. He was the first
African American to earn a doctorate and he firmly protested against Jim Crow Laws, lynchings,
and racial oppression. He was pre- 1960s civil rights activism, but the was a firm believer in
peaceful activism like Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. In establishing credibility it is significant that
W.E.B. Dubois is an African American as he writes, “this double-consciousness, this sense of
always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a
world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.” This idea of “double consciousness” might be
overlooked if a white man was talking about a black man because the white man doesn’t have
personal experience. W.E.B. Dubois has personally felt this “double consciousness” creating a
stronger argument which appeals to me. The fact that W.E.B. Dubois is highly educated also
creates credibility because it shows that he is intelligent which is a quality that intices trust. If the
author was uneducated he wouldn’t appeal to me because I would assume that he isn’t qualified
to discuss such issues. Sourcing the author helped me to identify if the author is credible which
creates stronger or less powerful rhetoric.
I contextualized the essay to help analyze the significance of the essay based on its time
period. This gave me an insight on the impact. “Of Our Spiritual Striving,” by W.E.B. Dubois was
written after the Civil War and gives insight into the feelings of African Americans after they were
given “freedom.” Dubois writes, “How does it feel to be a problem?” Without the
contextualization of the essay, this quote would not have the same pathos appeal to the
audience. If the audience didn’t know the atmosphere of 1903, the context would not explain the
feelings after slavery and the unresolved problem of racism. After the abolishment of slavery,
racism still thrived in America, but W.E.B. Dubois was a symbol of hope. He wrote, “the ideal of
human brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race; the ideal of fostering and
developing the traits and talents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for other races,
but rather in large conformity to the greater ideals of the American Republic, in order that
someday on American soil two world-races may give each to each those characteristics both so
sadly lack.” His writing affected the people in 1903 by appealing to the need for hope within the
oppressed African American culture. He wanted peace and interconnection for growth which
appeals not only to black people but also to white people. Understanding the time period
surrounding W.E.B. Dubois gave me an understanding of the impact of the reading.
I used the corroboration of Ta-Nehisi Coates to strengthen my understanding of, “Of Our
Spiritual Strivings,” by acknowledging the impact Dubois has had in the present. In the podcast,
“Imagining a New America,” the interviewee,Ta-Nehisi Coates, discusses how W.E.B. Dubois
personally affected his life. “Well, I had to read Souls of Black Folk at a very, very young age. I
probably was 9 or 10… I gotta say, I didn’t get it. It’s probably only in the last five to eight years,
[laughs] as I articulate in that book, that I got it. I didn’t understand blackness and whiteness and
white supremacy as central to American history. And I had people around me that said that.
They would say, ‘This country is built on our back.’ But I would wonder, ‘Why? How do you
illustrate that? What does that mean?’ … it probably was actually during my studies of the Civil
War that I got it, that what he meant by it being the problem of the — not just a problem for
black people, not just something that people should not do, but a thread that ran through all of
American history during that period.” The corroboration of Dubois, in the podcast, showed the
reader the impact of his rhetoric on the ideals held by people today. The impacts Dubois has
left, due to his rhetoric, have helped shape the future and will continue to appeal to people and
continue to change the ideals of future generations.
Sourcing the author, contextualizing the time period, and corroborating the text all
contributed to a deeper analyzation and comprehension of Dubois’ rhetorical discourse.

Sources
Du Bois, W. E. B. Du. (William Edward Burghardt). ​Souls of Black Folk: the Original Classic

Edition.​ Emereo Pty Limited, 2012.