Unit 9 of 9
Answer the Other Side Without Losing Your Point
What you will learn
- Notice which other belief an argument answers, even when no opponent is quoted.
- Admit a fair point from the other side without giving up your main claim.
- Answer the other side exactly where it challenges your reasoning.
- Explain a larger result only when your evidence truly leads to it.
Learn it step by step
Arguments are part of a conversation
A claim usually agrees with, changes, or rejects another belief. Ask: 'What might someone else say?' Naming that belief helps you understand what the writer is trying to prove.
A concession says 'this part is fair'
You can admit a true part of the other side: 'Adapting to existing institutions can create practical opportunities.' A concession shows you listened; it does not end your argument.
A rebuttal says why your claim still stands
After the concession, answer it: 'However, progress is incomplete if people must erase their identity to participate.' The rebuttal explains why the fair point does not defeat your position.
Do not leap to a huge ending
A larger implication must grow from your reasons. Instead of adding 'This affects all of society,' explain the chain: what changes, for whom, and why the evidence supports that result.
Try this five-step routine
- Read once to understand what is happening. Do not mark every sentence.
- Read again and underline the one sentence that best shows the unit’s main skill.
- Say the writer’s move in ordinary words: 'The writer compares [name both ideas]' or 'The writer admits [name the fair point].'
- Add the purpose: 'This helps the audience understand, believe, feel, or do [name the response].'
- Check your answer against the exact words in the passage and make it no broader than the evidence.
Annotated passage
The Souls of Black Folk
Written by W. E. B. Du BoisPublished: 1903
The numbered highlights continue from the beginning to the end of this passage.
The history of the American [Black Person] is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his [Black Person] soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that [Black Person] blood has a message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a [Black Person] and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face.
This, then, is the end of his striving: to be a co-worker in the kingdom of culture, to escape both death and isolation, to husband and use his best powers and his latent genius. These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten. The shadow of a mighty [Black Person] past flits through the tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx. Through history, the powers of single black men flash here and there like falling stars, and die sometimes before the world has rightly gauged their brightness. Here in America, in the few days since Emancipation, the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving has often made his very strength to lose effectiveness, to seem like absence of power, like weakness. And yet it is not weakness,—it is the contradiction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the black artisan—on the one hand to escape white contempt for a nation of mere hewers of wood and drawers of water, and on the other hand to plough and nail and dig for a poverty-stricken horde—could only result in making him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people, the [Black Person] minister or doctor was tempted toward quackery and demagogy; and by the criticism of the other world, toward ideals that made him ashamed of his lowly tasks. The would-be black savant was confronted by the paradox that the knowledge his people needed was a twice-told tale to his white neighbors, while the knowledge which would teach the white world was Greek to his own flesh and blood. The innate love of harmony and beauty that set the ruder souls of his people a-dancing and a-singing raised but confusion and doubt in the soul of the black artist; for the beauty revealed to him was the soul-beauty of a race which his larger audience despised, and he could not articulate the message of another people. This waste of double aims, this seeking to satisfy two unreconciled ideals, has wrought sad havoc with the courage and faith and deeds of ten thousand thousand people,—has sent them often wooing false gods and invoking false means of salvation, and at times has even seemed about to make them ashamed of themselves.
What the numbered highlights show
- The repeated 'to' phrases define the central hope: bring two divided parts of the self together without losing either one.
- Du Bois grants that American culture has value. This is a concession, not his final position.
- The image of bleaching names the cost Du Bois rejects: belonging should not require erasing Black identity.
- The word 'simply' frames equal belonging as a basic request, not an extreme demand.
- The list shows the consequence of division: talent is lost instead of being fully used.
- The movement image makes inner conflict visible. Competing demands pull a person in different directions.
- Du Bois moves from public goals to the artist’s inner struggle, showing how the same double pressure reaches creative life.
- The repeated wording names the final consequence of the conflict: energy is spent trying to meet two demands that have not been allowed to fit together. The ending returns to the central problem and shows its cost.
Rhetorical techniques in this passage
Each technique points to the numbered highlight where it appears. Hover over or focus the technique name for a definition.
ParallelismHighlight 1: “this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self”
The repeated 'to' phrases define the central hope: bring two divided parts of the self together without losing either one.
ConcessionHighlight 2: “He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa”
Du Bois grants that American culture has value. This is a concession, not his final position.
MetaphorHighlight 3: “He would not bleach his [Black Person] soul in a flood of white Americanism”
The image of bleaching names the cost Du Bois rejects: belonging should not require erasing Black identity.
UnderstatementHighlight 4: “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a [Black Person] and an American”
The word 'simply' frames equal belonging as a basic request, not an extreme demand.
EnumerationHighlight 5: “These powers of body and mind have in the past been strangely wasted, dispersed, or forgotten”
The list shows the consequence of division: talent is lost instead of being fully used.
Appeal to pathosHighlight 6: “the black man’s turning hither and thither in hesitant and doubtful striving”
The movement image makes inner conflict visible. Competing demands pull a person in different directions.
Appeal to ethosHighlight 4: “He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a [Black Person] and an American”
The word 'simply' frames equal belonging as a basic request, not an extreme demand.
Appeal to logosHighlight 2: “He would not Africanize America, for America has too much to teach the world and Africa”
Du Bois grants that American culture has value. This is a concession, not his final position.
W. E. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903). View the source edition.
See how the analysis works
Du Bois recognizes that education, money, and adaptation can offer practical progress. He does not reject those benefits. His deeper claim is that progress remains incomplete when it requires a person to erase part of who they are. The concession makes room for practical gains; the rebuttal explains their limit.
Practice with five comparable passages
These public-domain speeches, essays, and arguments let you practise the same skill with a new passage. Each link opens the named source edition.
essays and social criticism
The Souls of Black Folk
Why read it: Mark the opposing view, the point Du Bois grants, and the reason his main position still stands.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Du Bois’s essay collection.
Open this public-domain sourcescholarly address
The Conservation of Races
Why read it: Compare how Du Bois answers competing ideas about identity in a formal address and a later essay.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Du Bois’s scholarly address.
Open this public-domain sourceessays and social criticism
Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
Why read it: Trace concession, rebuttal, and implication in a later argument about democracy and belonging.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Du Bois’s later essay collection.
Open this public-domain sourcephilosophical essay
On Liberty
Why read it: Study a writer who states an opposing view fairly before explaining the limits of that view.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition of Mill’s essay on liberty.
Open this public-domain sourcememoir and public address
Up from Slavery
Why read it: Compare Washington’s accommodation of competing interests with Du Bois’s response to the costs of accommodation.
Project Gutenberg public-domain edition containing Washington’s Atlanta Exposition address.
Open this public-domain sourceMultiple-choice skill check
Read the source excerpt or passage lines below. Keep them in view while you answer each question.
Some may argue that immediate material advancement should take priority over preserving a distinct cultural perspective.
Material security is a necessary condition for durable civic participation.
Yet security obtained only through accepting a diminished civic identity leaves the underlying conflict unresolved.
Even granting that practical need, the broader claim remains…
Du Bois’s reasoning suggests that pluralism depends not only on admitting groups to institutions but on allowing them to shape the terms of common life.