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Color and Race in America

What Black Scholars and Artists Had to Say About It

William Spivey
3 min readOct 4, 2021
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I’m going to paraphrase the introduction of a Prince cover of, Betcha By Golly Wow!” Originally performed by The Stylistics.

“Baby, sometimes

A man can’t find words to express everything he feels inside

But every just so often

The words of another … seem to work out fine”

Writing about race and history in America sometimes leaves me searching for original thoughts to express. I only have to look back at what has been said and written by others to remind and inspire me to get back on my horse and continue on. Here is today’s inspiration:

“I still think today as yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back of the problem of race and color lies a greater problem which both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so many civilized persons are willing to live in comfort even if the price of this is poverty, ignorance and disease of the majority of their fellowmen; that to maintain this privilege, men have waged war until today war tends to become universal and continuous, and the excuse for this war continues largely to be color and race.” W.E.B. Du Bois

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William Spivey
William Spivey

Written by William Spivey

I write about politics, history, education, and race. Follow me at williamfspivey.com and support me at https://ko-fi.com/williamfspivey0680

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