One can still understand that Dewey did not mention W.E.B. Du Bois and his term color line. What I don't understand is that all his interpreters then (in his lifetime) and now - 100 yeas later - do not bring this problem to the table either - presumably because they interpret only Dewey's self-image and not the social problems of his time that he suppressed.
Mary White Ovington mentioned in her book "Half a Man" that an African American pastor from New York visited Paris for the first time. He knew from New York only the stereotype that Paris was a "sinful big city", and he knew that he only spoke very badly French. He then tells how great his joy was that all the people there had been warm and "human" to him. "And how are you doing in New York?" he's asked. He says, "I'll only be tolerated in New York!" -
W.E.B. Du Bois tells the same story in his autobiography when he first arrived in Rotterdam by steamer and got to know Europe (I think it was 1895). He had a completely new feeling that he had never known before: to be addressed as a "human being" by others - there was no double consciousness. It was a deep experience that shaped him for life.
100 years ago, the cosmopolitan city of New York was regarded as the most liberal US-city, if I am right.
I see, it is an unpleasant thread I opened. But I hope I am wrong with such assumption. Let hear your opinion.
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