Du Bois isn't warning that culture dies without the arts—he's identifying something more unsettling: a people *become* forgettable the moment they stop producing joy. When enslaved and colonized peoples were systematically stripped of song and dance, their oppressors weren't merely silencing entertainment; they were attempting to erase the evidence of their humanity itself. The blues, spirituals, and jazz that emerged from American suffering proved this claim true in reverse—these weren't luxuries added after survival was secured, but the very proof that a community refused to vanish into statistical abstraction. A people without laughter, in other words, becomes a people no one bothers to remember.