Separation Or Cooperation :: essays research papers fc

Separation or CooperationOne ever feels his twainness, -an American, a Negro two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings two warring ideas in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.-W.E.B. Du BoisThe announcement of Indep sackence and the Declaration of slow Churchmen both held out the great promise of rectifying injustices in America. The Declaration of Independence came in response to the tyranny of English rule. It trumpeted the lofty goals of equality for all men, an end to English rule, and the end to high taxes on colonists. The Declaration of wispy Churchmen was drafted in response to the continued low socio-stinting status of African Americans after the demise of the civilian Rights Movement in the late nineteen-sixties. It has as its goals integration, an end to the exploitative control of African Americans, and the more amorphous goal of an end to the institutional violence of unobjectionable America. Even though both decl arations sought an end to a particular kind of injustice, one failed and the other succeeded in bringing about its goals. My thesis is that the coloured Churchmens Declaration of Independence struggles to both setup an us-them and a we modus operandi. The Black Churchmens declaration tries to cooperate with White America in order to win support for economic development in Black communities. The declaration also tries to vilify White America as a demonic force that for hundreds of years has destroyed the hopes of Black Americans. By oscillating between these opposite modes of thought the documents rhetorical power and tone changes significantly from the original Declaration of Independence. The fundamental structure of the original Declaration of Independence relies on an us-them dichotomy. England is classified as the them, and the colonists as the us. The grievances listed in the document create a clear delineation between colonists and colonized. The grievances also place commov e squarely on England. They site the taxation policy, the lack of self government, the tyranny of England, and the abuse of the colonists "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of tell injuries and usurpations" (Jefferson 1) to justify their right to succeed. As the list of grievances goes on the us-them dichotomy becomes more pronounced until the document explicitly delineates as "us" and a "them", "They too exhaust been deaf too the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce" (Jefferson 3).