Chapter 4, Cheer the Weary Traveller, W.E.B. Du Bois, Germany and the Politics of (Dis)placement Summary and Analysis

The cultures of the black Atlantic have a restless mood. Blacks take their feeling of the curse of homelessness and forced exile and repossess and affirm it. This unusual perspective is rooted in racial subordination. The issue of roots only became important when diaspora blacks wanted a political agenda, as they needed a concept of cultural integrity to define themselves as a group. Blacks actively sought self-emancipation from slavery, they moved towards acquiring the citizenship denied by slavery and finally sought an autonomous place in formal politics. Each was a stage in a progression. It created a tension between a politics of fulfillment and a politics of transformation, leading...