Difficult Conversations Final DiscussionYou should be finishing .docx

Difficult Conversations Final Discussion
You should be finishing up the book this week and gathering
your thoughts for your proposal submission. Please respond to
these questions as you reflect on what you have read thus far, as
well as reply to two classmates by the due date.
1. How do you decide whether to raise a difficult issue?
2. If you decide not to raise something but stay in the
relationship, how do you cope with your thoughts and feelings
so that they don't fester? How do you actually let go?
3. Can you think of a time in the past when you've successfully
let go of an issue in a relationship?
4. Can you think of a time when you've tried to do this, and it
hasn't worked? Why didn't it work?
As most classmates are working professionals, please have your
answer posted by 10 a.m. on Sunday to give your classmates 24
hours to respond to your post.
YEARS
PROJECT M :USE 11
The Souls of Black Folk
W.E.B. Du Bois, Shawn Leigh Alexander
Published by University of Massachusetts Press

Bois, W.E.B. Du and Shawn Leigh Alexander.
The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches.
University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.
Project MUSE. muse.jhu.edu/book/59563.
For additional information about this book
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/59563
[ Access provided at 17 Aug 2020 23:33 GMT from University
of California, Berkeley ]
https://muse.jhu.edu
https://muse.jhu.edu/book/59563
I
OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS
O water, voice of my heart, crying in the sand,
All night long crying with a mournful cry,
As I lie and listen, and cannot understand
The voice of my heart in my side or the voice of the sea,
O water, crying for rest, is it I, is it I?
All night long the water is crying to me.
Unresting water, there shall never be rest
Till the last moon droop and the last tide fail,
And the fre of the end begin to burn in the west;
And the heart shall be weary and wonder and cry like the
sea,
All life long crying without avail,

As the water all night long is crying to me.
ARTHUR SYMONS.
BETWEEN me and the other world there is ever
an unasked question: unasked by some through
feelings of delicacy; by others through the dif-
fculty of rightly framing it. All, nevertheless, futter
round it. They approach me in a half-hesitant sort of way,
eye me curiously or compassionately, and then, instead
of saying directly, How does it feel to be a problem? they
2 THE SOULS OF BLACK FOLK
say, I know an excellent colored man in my town; or, I
fought at Mechanicsville; or, Do not these Southern out-
rages make your blood boil? At these I smile, or am inter-
ested, or reduce the boiling to a simmer, as the occasion
may require. To the real question, How does it feel to be
a problem? I answer seldom a word.
And yet, being a problem is a strange experience, —
peculiar even for one who has never been anything else,
save perhaps in babyhood and in Europe. It is in the early
days of rollicking boyhood that the revelation frst bursts
upon one, all in a day, as it were. I remember well when
the shadow swept across me. I was a little thing, away
up in the hills of New England, where the dark Housa-
tonic winds between Hoosac and Taghkanic to the sea.
In a wee wooden schoolhouse, something put it into the
boys’ and girls’ heads to buy gorgeous visiting-cards
— ten cents a package — and exchange. The exchange
was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my

card, — refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it
dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was
different from the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and
life and longing, but shut out from their world by a vast
veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil,
to creep through; I held all beyond it in common con-
tempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great
wandering shadows. That sky was bluest when I could
beat my mates at examination-time, or beat them at a
foot-race, or even beat their stringy heads. Alas, with
the years all this fne contempt began to fade; for the
worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities,
were theirs, not mine. But they should not keep these
3 OF OUR SPIRITUAL STRIVINGS
prizes, I said; some, all, I would wrest from them. Just
how I would do it I could never decide: by reading law,
by healing the sick, by telling the wonderful tales that
swam in my head, — some way. With other black boys
the strife was not so fercely sunny: their youth shrunk
into tasteless sycophancy, or into silent hatred of the
pale world about them and mocking distrust of every-
thing white; or wasted itself in a bitter cry, Why did God
make me an outcast and a stranger in mine own house?
The shades of the prison-house closed round about us all:
walls strait and stubborn to the whitest, but relentlessly
narrow, tall, and unscalable to sons of night who must
plod darkly on in resignation, or beat unavailing palms
against the stone, or steadily, half hopelessly, watch the
streak of blue above.
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman,
the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh

son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this
American world, — a world which yields him no true self-
consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the
revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at
one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s
soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused con-
tempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness, — an Ameri-
can, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled
strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose
dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
The history of the American Negro is the history of
this strife, — this longing to attain self-conscious man-
hood, 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 Negro soul in a food of white American-
ism, for he knows that Negro blood has a message for the
world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to
be both a Negro 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 Negro past fits through the

tale of Ethiopia the Shadowy and of Egypt the Sphinx.
Throughout history, the powers of single black men fash
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 contra-
diction of double aims. The double-aimed struggle of the
black artisan — on the one hand to escape white con-
tempt 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 mak-
ing him a poor craftsman, for he had but half a heart in
either cause. By the poverty and ignorance of his people,
the Negro minister or doctor was tempted toward quack-
ery 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 para-
dox 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 fesh
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.
Away back in the days of bondage they thought to see
in one divine event the end of all doubt and disappoint-
ment; few men ever worshipped Freedom with half such
unquestioning faith as did the American Negro for two
centuries. To him, so far as he thought and dreamed,
slavery was indeed the sum of all villainies, the cause of
all sorrow, the root of all prejudice; Emancipation was
the key to a promised land of sweeter beauty than ever
stretched before the eyes of wearied Israelites. In song
and exhortation swelled one refrain — Liberty; in his
tears and curses the God he implored had Freedom in
his right hand. At last it came, — suddenly, fearfully,
like a dream. With one wild carnival of blood and passion
came the message in his own plaintive cadences: —
“Shout, O children!
Shout, you’re free!
For God has bought your liberty!”
Years have passed away since then, — ten, twenty,
forty; forty years of national life, forty years of renewal
and development, and yet the swarthy spectre sits in its
accustomed seat at the Nation’s feast. In vain do we cry
to this our vastest social problem: —
“Take any shape but that, and my frm nerves

Shall never tremble!”
The Nation has not yet found peace from its sins; the
freedman has not yet found in freedom his promised
land. Whatever of good may have come in these years of
change, the shadow of a deep disappointment rests upon
the Negro people, — a disappointment all the more bitter
because the unattained ideal was unbounded save by the
simple ignorance of a lowly people.
The frst decade was merely a prolongation of the vain
search for freedom, the boon that seemed ever barely to
elude their grasp, — like a tantalizing will-o’-the-wisp,
maddening and misleading the headless host. The holo-
caust of war, the terrors of the Ku-Klux Klan, the lies
of carpet-baggers, the disorganization of industry, and
the contradictory advice of friends and foes, left the
bewildered serf with no new watchword beyond the old
cry for freedom. As the time few, however, he began to
grasp a new idea. The ideal of liberty demanded for its
attainment powerful means, and these the Fifteenth
Amendment gave him. The ballot, which before he had
looked upon as a visible sign of freedom, he now regarded
as the chief means of gaining and perfecting the liberty
with which war had partially endowed him. And why
not? Had not votes made war and emancipated millions?
Had not votes enfranchised the freedmen? Was anything
impossible to a power that had done all this? A million
black men started with renewed zeal to vote themselves
into the kingdom. So the decade few away, the revolution
of 1876 came, and left the half-free serf weary, wonder-

ing, but still inspired. Slowly but steadily, in the following
years, a new vision began gradually to replace the dream
of political power, — a powerful movement, the rise of
another ideal to guide the unguided, another pillar of fre
by night after a clouded day. It was the ideal of “book-
learning”; the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance,
to know and test the power of the cabalistic letters of the
white man, the longing to know. Here at last seemed to
have been discovered the mountain path to Canaan; lon-
ger than the highway of Emancipation and law, steep and
rugged, but straight, leading to heights high enough to
overlook life.
Up the new path the advance guard toiled, slowly,
heavily, doggedly; only those who have watched and
guided the faltering feet, the misty minds, the dull
understandings, of the dark pupils of these schools know
how faithfully, how piteously, this people strove to learn.
It was weary work. The cold statistician wrote down the
inches of progress here and there, noted also where here
and there a foot had slipped or some one had fallen. To
the tired climbers, the horizon was ever dark, the mists
were often cold, the Canaan was always dim and far
away. If, however, the vistas disclosed as yet no goal, no
resting-place, little but fattery and criticism, the journey
at least gave leisure for refection and self-examination;
it changed the child of Emancipation to the youth with
dawning self-consciousness, self-realization, self-respect.
In those sombre forests of his striving his own soul rose
before him, and he saw himself, — darkly as through a
veil; and yet he saw in himself some faint revelation of

his power, of his mission. He began to have a dim feel-
ing that, to attain his place in the world, he must be
himself, and not another. For the frst time he sought
to analyze the burden he bore upon his back, that dead-
weight of social degradation partially masked behind a
half-named Negro problem. He felt his poverty; with-
out a cent, without a home, without land, tools, or sav-
ings, he had entered into competition with rich, landed,
skilled neighbors. To be a poor man is hard, but to be a
poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hard-
ships. He felt the weight of his ignorance, — not sim-
ply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities;
the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness
of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet.
Nor was his burden all poverty and ignorance. The red
stain of bastardy, which two centuries of systematic legal
deflement of Negro women had stamped upon his race,
meant not only the loss of ancient African chastity, but
also the hereditary weight of a mass of corruption from
white adulterers, threatening almost the obliteration of
the Negro home.
A people thus handicapped ought not to be asked to
race with the world, but rather allowed to give all its
time and thought to its own social problems. But alas!
while sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his
prostitutes, the very soul of the toiling, sweating black
man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men
call the shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it
as the natural defence of culture against barbarism,
learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the

“higher” against the “lower” races. To which the Negro
cries Amen! and swears that to so much of this strange
prejudice as is founded on just homage to civilization,
culture, righteousness, and progress, he humbly bows
and meekly does obeisance. But before that nameless
prejudice that leaps beyond all this he stands helpless,
dismayed, and well-nigh speechless; before that personal
disrespect and mockery, the ridicule and systematic
humiliation, the distortion of fact and wanton license of
fancy, the cynical ignoring of the better and the boister-
ous welcoming of the worse, the all-pervading desire to
inculcate disdain for everything black, from Toussaint
to the devil, — before this there rises a sickening despair
that would disarm and discourage any nation save that
black host to whom “discouragement” is an unwritten
word.
But the facing of so vast a prejudice could not but
bring the inevitable self-questioning, self-disparagement,
and lowering of ideals which ever accompany repres-
sion and breed in an atmosphere of contempt and hate.
Whisperings and portents came borne upon the four
winds: Lo! we are diseased and dying, cried the dark
hosts; we cannot write, our voting is vain; what need of
education, since we must always cook and serve? And
the Nation echoed and enforced this self-criticism, say-
ing: Be content to be servants, and nothing more; what
need of higher culture for half-men? Away with the black
man’s ballot, by force or fraud, — and behold the suicide
of a race! Nevertheless, out of the evil came something of
good, — the more careful adjustment of education to real

life, the clearer perception of the Negroes’ social respon-
sibilities, and the sobering realization of the meaning of
progress.
So dawned the time of Sturm und Drang: storm and
stress to-day rocks our little boat on the mad waters of the
world-sea; there is within and without the sound of con-
fict, the burning of body and rending of soul; inspiration
strives with doubt, and faith with vain questionings. The
bright ideals of the past, — physical freedom, political
power, the training of brains and the training of hands,
— all these in turn have waxed and waned, until even the
last grows dim and overcast. Are they all wrong, — all
false? No, not that, but each alone was over-simple and
incomplete, — the dreams of a credulous race-childhood,
or the fond imaginings of the other world which does
not know and does not want to know our power. To be
really true, all these ideals must be melted and welded
into one. The training of the schools we need to-day more
than ever, — the training of deft hands, quick eyes and
ears, and above all the broader, deeper, higher culture of
gifted minds and pure hearts. The power of the ballot
we need in sheer self-defence, — else what shall save us
from a second slavery? Freedom, too, the long-sought,
we still seek, — the freedom of life and limb, the free-
dom to work and think, the freedom to love and aspire.
Work, culture, liberty, — all these we need, not singly
but together, not successively but together, each growing
and aiding each, and all striving toward that vaster ideal
that swims before the Negro people, the ideal of human
brotherhood, gained through the unifying ideal of Race;

the ideal of fostering and developing the traits and tal-
ents of the Negro, not in opposition to or contempt for
other races, but rather in large conformity to the greater
ideals of the American Republic, in order that some day
on American soil two world-races may give each to each
those characteristics both so sadly lack. We the darker
ones come even now not altogether empty-handed: there
are to-day no truer exponents of the pure human spirit
of the Declaration of Independence than the American
Negroes; there is no true American music but the wild
sweet melodies of the Negro slave; the American fairy
tales and folk-lore are Indian and African; and, all in
all, we black men seem the sole oasis of simple faith and
reverence in a dusty desert of dollars and smartness.
Will America be poorer if she replace her brutal dyspep-
tic blundering with lighthearted but determined Negro
humility? or her coarse and cruel wit with loving jovial
good humor? or her vulgar music with the soul of the
Sorrow Songs?
Merely a concrete test of the underlying principles of
the great republic is the Negro Problem, and the spiri-
tual striving of the freedmen’s sons is the travail of souls
whose burden is almost beyond the measure of their
strength, but who bear it in the name of an historic race,
in the name of this the land of their fathers’ fathers,
and in the name of human opportunity.
And now what I have briefy sketched in large outline
let me on coming pages tell again in many ways, with
loving emphasis and deeper detail, that men may listen

to the striving in the souls of black folk.
10/14/22, 2:02 PMPreview Rubric: Difficult Conversations
Proposal Rubric - Fa22 MGMT 492-20 BBA Capstone -
Minnesota State University Mankato
Page 1 of
2https://mnsu.learn.minnstate.edu/d2l/lp/rubrics/preview.d2l?ou
=5888678&rubricId=520003&originTool=quicklinks
Difficult Conversations Proposal Rubric
Course: Fa22 MGMT 492-20 BBA Capstone
Criteria Excellent Good Fair Opportunities Nothing to review
Introduction &
Conclusion: In opening,
student clearly
explained the book they
read and outlined the
main points they will be
covering in their
presentation.
Content: Concepts

outlined in the
introduction/backgroun
d were addressed in
order. Each had reason it
was included and
support. Support could
be examples from your
life, quotes from the
text, details of future
application on this
concept etc.
Meaningfulness: It
appears that the student
did more than offer a
book report. They were
reflective while clearly
addressing a specific
audience from the

assignment directions.
Task Requirements
Format
References
20 points
Closely applies to material
covered during the course
(course content only, not
task)
15 points
Somewhat applies to
material covered during
the course (course content
only, not task)
10 points
Met most requirements
and was fairly prepared
5 points 0 points

20 points
Followed the assignment
directions correctly to
include all bullet point
requirements
15 points
Included most, but missed
at least one major bullet
point requirement for the
assignment
10 points
Missed the requirements
of the assignment in three
or more bullet point areas
5 points
Met few requirements and
was fairly prepared
0 points

nothing submitted
20 points
Followed the assignment
directions correctly to
include all bullet point
requirements
15 points
Included most, but missed
at least one major bullet
point requirement for the
assignment
10 points
Missed 2-3 the
requirements of the
assignment more bullet
point areas
5 points
Missed 3+ of the

requirements of the
assignment more bullet
point areas
0 points
nothing submitted
20 points
Chapter 10 was followed
and APA format for
reference page, and in-text
citations
15 points
Format and citations were
attempted but not correct
10 points
NA
5 points
Chapter 10 and APA
format not followed

0 points
nothing submitted
20 points
Above minimum required
15 points
Minimum required sources
10 points
Reference page and in text
5 points
Either no reference page,
0 points
Contains no references
10/14/22, 2:02 PMPreview Rubric: Difficult Conversations
Proposal Rubric - Fa22 MGMT 492-20 BBA Capstone -
Minnesota State University Mankato
Page 2 of
2https://mnsu.learn.minnstate.edu/d2l/lp/rubrics/preview.d2l?ou
=5888678&rubricId=520003&originTool=quicklinks
Total

Overall Score
sources cited within and
reference page correctly
formatted and submitted
cited within and reference
page correctly formatted
and submitted
citations attempted but
not formatted correctly
or in text citations
Level 4
100 points minimum
Level 3
75 points minimum
Level 2
5 points minimum
Melissa Diegnau, MBA
MGMT 492
Specifics for the Difficult Conversations Assignment
Difficult Conversations: (120 points) After reading this book,
you will be asked to construct a business proposal that seeks
change by applying both the concepts in the “difficult

conversations” text as well as what has been learned regarding
the proper format for business reports/proposals. Topics to
consider—what they are, common problems, how we can
improve them, etc. Most of what you discuss will come from
ideas explored in the book
Difficult Conversations, yet many of the things studied
in this class, and the diversity and inclusion content from
MGMT 490, can assist you in helping others productively
manage conflict. Once you are comfortable with the required
format/content, then think about how you can apply what you
read to a current/past workplace situation and use the proposal
to identify the current state, why change is needed, and how that
change could be implemented based on what you read. This
assignment is confidential, and only my eyes will see it. I am
looking to see if the content in this book was meaningful and if
you know how to better handle a real-world situation because of
it. You will upload your document in your week. To ensure
you are detailed, the final product should be 3-6 single-spaced
pages with a minimum of six citations either from the book or
other credible sources. In reading, I should clearly understand
the situation, why these concepts would help, a walkthrough of
concept application, and either results or anticipated results. I
encourage all students to submit their topic choice before
preparing their proposals.
What I would do if I were Preparing for this Assignment:
1. Carefully go through the book
Difficult Conversations and select the quotations and
ideas you believe support a workplace current or past conflict
you can use as your inspiration to suggest workplace change.
2. To ensure maximum points, review the rubric under
Assessments called Difficult Conversations before preparing
your proposal.
3. Review chapters 9 and 10 in your text for visual formatting

requirements for business reports and proposals, including
spacing and heading. (I believe you will find chapter 10 the
most helpful. Specifically, 10.9 for a works cited sample, and
10.2 and 10.4 for a format sample. Pages 288-290 discuss
minimum content sections).
· This is an informal proposal, meaning TOC and title page are
not needed but practice formal, third-person business writing.
4. You want to write formally, but for the purpose of this
assignment, generate an informal letter proposal so you can
focus on applying your effort to the book concept application
and not creating a table of contents. Follow the format in the
book regarding single-spacing, headings, etc., and be sure these
elements are included:
· Introduction
· Background of the problem
· Proposal
· Staffing and budgeting needs
· Authorization
· Appendix (optional, not required)
· References, work cited page properly formatting giving proper
credit to the quotations, graphics within the proposal.
· Be sure you properly cite within the proposal AND have a
reference page
· If you are unsure of the proper format, follow the sample in
your chapter, or go to
https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/purdue_owl.html for
guidance.
5. Be sure your proposal is detailed enough that I clearly
understand the situation and can clearly see DC concepts
directly applied as to how to improve this situation. Your
proposal should be free of errors: grammar, punctuation, and
spacing.
6. Upload your proposal in your week. This is confidential for
my eyes to see only.

Tips:
1. Assume the audience has not read this book or situation you
are analyzing
2. You are a manager/teacher/problem solver here—please be
professional and thoughtful in your approach
3. Don’t recite the book; I’ve read it. Show that you read and
mastered the concepts by applying them and citing them.
4. This should be fun, educational, and professional. Be
creative.
5. Feel free to get help from friends. For example, if you
wanted to include a survey, case study, or outcome from a role
play, that is fine but not required.
6. You are welcome to cite more than just this book to support
your proposal.
7. I should read it, understand the issue/need, see how the
change would play out, what is needed to make the change, and,
based on the problem, want to make the change.
8. Have fun…create something that teaches others a few things
that might help them not avoid difficult conversations in the
future but approach them more confidently and earn more
positive results.

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