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Lesson 9W.E.B. Du Bois

Robert Wonser

SOC 368 – Classical Sociological Theory

Spring 2014

22Lesson 9: W.E.B. Du Bois, Classical Sociological Theory

W.E.B. Du Bois

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868 – 1963)

Born in Great Barrington, MassachusettsPrivileged upbringing, PhD from Harvard

UniversityThe Philadelphia Negro (1899/1996)The Souls of Black Folk (1903/1996)Taught sociology at Atlanta University from

1897-1910)

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W.E.B. Du Bois

Crucial in forming the Niagara Movement, an interracial civil rights organization interested in “abolition of all caste distinctions based simply on race and color.

NAACP in 1910, became its director of Publications and Research

Founded NAACP’s magazine, The Crisis

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Conflict with Booker T. Washington

Washington regarded by many white leaders as spokesman for black America.

Du Bois viewed him as far too conservative and much too willing to subordinate Negros to whites in general and especially the economy where they would be trained to be and satisfied with manual work.

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America, Communism and Socialism

Early on believed racial problems could be resolved peacefully within capitalism.

He lost faith though in capitalists and more supportive of socialism.

Grew more radical still and drifted towards communism.

Impressed with its operation in the Soviet Union and China.

Moved to Ghana where he died in 1963.

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Though certainly an activist he was also a sociologist

Du Bois’ ideas meet criteria for sociological theory:Wide range of application (especially to issues

concerning minority groups)Deal with the issue of raceStood the test of time

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Standpoint Theory

Like other feminists and multicultural theorists, he didn’t make grand theories but instead relied on a form of standpoint theory.

The perspective with which he wrote was that of black Americans.

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Science

Although most of his work wasn’t considered scientific, he like Spencer, Comte, and Durkheim, was a strong believer in and advocate of science, especially the social scientific study of race.

Attempted to be “value-free” in the Philadelphia Negro where he utilized statistical information, history and the current status of negroes in the 7th ward.

He allowed the data and the people to speak for themselves.

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Though, later on, he wrote about issues with increasing passion and anger—anything but value free.

But still argued for and believed in dispassionate scientific study of race relations.

“one could not be calm, cool and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved.” (Du Bois 1968:253)

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Du Bois and “New” Social Theory

Work mirrored later work of the feminists, multicultural theorists and postmodernists in critique and tone.

Standpoint theoryCritical of the “value-free” perspective – who has

such a view?The new theories/theorists argued for theories

that self-consciously looked at the social world from the standpoint of such minority groups.

Building on Marx’s view from the proletariat’s standpoint.

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Du Bois offered a view of society from the standpoint of minorities and especially black Americans.

Being black gives observers the ability to see what whites cannot: “We who are dark can see America in a way that white Americans cannot” (Du Bois, 1926/1995a:509)

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From “The Souls of White Folk”

“Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me mis-birth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped,—ugly, human. “

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Rejection of general theories and greater appreciation of local theories.

Did not endeavor to create a grand theory of society, instead focused more narrowly on race and race relations.

A general theory was another illusion of modernist thinking.

Rejection of value-free thinking.

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Du Bois as Modernist

1) He believed in science

2) For most of his life he believed in progress, especially for black Americans, even though it was being thwarted by whites

3) Bought into socialism and later communism (examples of grand narratives).

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Studying Race Scientifically: The Philadelphia Negro

Du Bois did his own fieldwork.His focus was done as though it were

done today. Geographic origins of the population, marriage

and the family, education (and illiteracy), work, the church, housing and community, and politics and voting.

Largely descriptive and unguided by theoretical perspective and doesn’t end up with a broad theoretical conclusion.

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The Philadelphia Negro

Had a contemporary sense of important issues, especially time, space and their intersection.

Critical blame placed on whites for subordinating the efforts of blacks to advance but also critical of blacks’ contribution (like going to white physicians and lawyers instead of black).

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Regarding work and occupations held be Negroes

Low status resulted from:

1) Lack of previous training leading to low work related efficiency

2) Competition from white immigrants

3) Industrial changes leading to replacement of small businesses with large businesses blacks were unprepared for

4) Wide ranging discrimination on the basis of race.

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Social Inequality: Caste and Class

Class system:Grade 1 – respectable families earning enough

to live wellGrade 2 – respectable working class with steady

paying workGrade 3 – the poor and very poor without steady

incomeGrade 4 – “the lowest class of criminals,

prostitutes and loafers’ the ‘submerged tenth’”

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Paid a lot of attention on the elites of society (don’t forget his background…)

White elites should help blacks.“polite and sympathetic” and “generous” to

negroes.“The Talented Tenth” described the top that

were the leaders of the Negro community. Later gave way to the “Guiding Hundredth” and had to be willing to “sacrifice and plan such economic revolution in history and just distribution of wealth, as would make the rise of our group possible.” (Du Bois, 1948/1995:350).

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“The Benevolent Despot”

The benevolent despot is often a benevolent capitalist.

Was a reflection of Du Bois’ faith in whites, white leaders and capitalism.

Thought they could help, but also didn’t let blacks off the hook an said main movement must come from black people.

This hope in the benevolent despot didn’t last long…

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Appeal to White Self-Interest

Du Bois often sought to improve the situation for blacks by appealing to white self-interest.

Whites as well as the whole of society would benefit from black educational and economic advancement as well as an amelioration of problems within the black community.

Whites unwilling to recognize this? “one of the great postulates in the science of economics—that men will seek their economic advantage—is in this case untrue.”

“Such discrimination is morally wrong, politically dangerous, industrially wasteful, and socially silly. It is the duty of whites to stop it, and to do so primarily for their own sakes.”

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On Race

“The discovery of personal whiteness among the world's peoples is a very modern thing,—a nineteenth and twentieth century matter, indeed. The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction. The Middle Age regarded skin color with mild curiosity; and even up into the eighteenth century we were hammering our national manikins into one, great, Universal Man, with fine frenzy which ignored color and race even more than birth. Today we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!” from The Souls of White Folk

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Racialism and Race Pride

Argues that the “race idea” is “the central thought of all history”

Race: “a family of human beings, generally of common blood and language, always of common history, traditions and impulses, who are both voluntarily and involuntarily striving together for the accomplishment of certain more or less vividly conceived ideals of life.”

Argues that Negroes are superior to whites, and it is their role to “soften” the hardness of the “twisted white American environment”

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Racialism and Race Pride

Race was at the base of what Du Bois called “the negro problem” or the frictions between the races in America.

In spite of focus on race, he recognized there were no “pure” races and that the vast majority of the differences between the races stemmed from differences in their social environment.

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The Veil

The veil is a clear separation, a barrier, between Negroes and whites.

The imagery is not one of a wall, but rather a porous material through which each race can see the other.

Easy to see through, but clearly separates the races.

Can be lifted, ventured behind and let white readers glimpse the “souls” of Negroes in America.

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Leaving, then, the white world, I have stepped within the Veil, raising it that you may view faintly its deeper recesses,--the meaning of its religion, the passion of its human sorrow, and the struggle of its greater souls. All this I have ended with a tale twice told but seldom written, and a chapter of song.

Some of these thoughts of mine have seen the light before in other guise. For kindly consenting to their republication here, in altered and extended form, I must thank the publishers of the Atlantic Monthly, The World's Work, the Dial, The New World, and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. Before each chapter, as now printed, stands a bar of the Sorrow Songs,--some echo of haunting melody from the only American music which welled up from black souls in the dark past. And, finally, need I add that I who speak here am bone of the bone and flesh of the flesh of them that live within the Veil? (Du Bois, 1903/1996:xxiv)

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The Veil

As something that shuts blacks out from the rest of the world and within which they live

As something that blacks are born withFalls or is between blacks and whitesSomething that affects they ways negroes

and whites see each otherHangs between Negroes and opportunity

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The Veil

Through education and truth it is possible to “dwell above the veil”

Dwell above the veil in deathNegatively affects whites and blacksImpoverishes them in many ways

including their soulsSomething he hopes will be lifted in order

to “set the prisoned free”

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"And then--the Veil, the Veil of color. It drops as drops the night on southern seas--vast, sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty and Tears. As one peers through its intricate, unfathomable pattern of ancient, old, old design, one sees blood and guilt and misunderstanding. And yet it hangs there, this Veil, between then and now, between Pale and Colored and Black and White--between You and Me. Surely it is but a thought-thing, tenuous, intangible; yet just as surely is it true and terrible and not in our little day may you and I lift it. We may feverishly unravel its edges and even climb slow with giant shears to where its ringed and gilded top nestles close to the throne of Eternity. But as we work and climb we shall see through streaming eyes and hear with aching ears, lynching and murder, cheating and despising, degrading and lying, so flashed and flashed through this vast hanging darkness that the Doer never sees the Deed and the Victim knows no the Victor and Each hate All in wild and bitter ignorance. Listen, O Isles, to those voices from within the Veil, for they portray the most human hurt of the Twentieth Cycle.”

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Double Consciousness, or “Twoness”

“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 contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,—an American, 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.” (Du Bois, 1903/1996:5)

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Double Consciousness, or “Twoness”

African Americans were simultaneously outsiders and insiders, outsiders within.

Both inside and outside the dominant white society (separated by the Veil).

Gives them unique and enhanced insight into society as a whole (ahem, standpoint theory) and it produces an enormous tension that manifests itself in pathologies within the black community.

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Economics

“The main weakness of the Negro’s position is that since emancipation he has never had an adequate economic foundation.”

“I believe in the dictum of Karl Marx, that the economic foundation of a nation is widely decisive for its politics, its art and its culture.”

Race never stands apart from economic realities (Lemert)

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Economics

Criticized America for its fetishization of money and overarching materialism.

Emphasized higher education so blacks could move beyond simple materialism.

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Karl Marx, Socialism, and Communism

Conservative by virtue of being elitistEarlier believed in reforms, “Only by a union of

intelligence and sympathy across the color-line in this critical period of the republic shall justice and right triumph.”

Reform proved ineffective and Du Bois was drawn to socialism and later communism.

Came to the realization that without the “overthrow of capitalist monopoly the Negro cannot survive in the United States as a self-respecting cultural unit, integrating gradually into the nation, but not on terms which imply self destruction or loss of his possible gifts to America”

Class takes on more importance as he ages.

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Karl Marx, Socialism, and Communism

Rather than metatheoretical treatises he was concerned with an integration of theory and praxis.