In early writings, Du Bois at times referred to black as “backward,” of “lows social grade,’ “undeveloped people,” “ignorant,” in a state of “race-childhood,” “primitive folk,” and in need of “guidance” from culturally superior groups, including selective whites.  

 

When analyzing terminology used by Du Bois over a century ago, some contemporary scholars have tended to unwittingly blame Du Bois for not using social constructionist language that had not been invented.  It was possible for Du Bois and other scholars in the early twentieth century to use a vocabulary not meant to convey essentialism, even though today no constructivist would use it. (p30)

1. For African Americans, the stages of group development were rudely interrupted by devastating forms of oppression, including the slave trade, over two centuries of slavery, and the radical ruptures caused by the Civil War and emancipation.  For Du Bois, these social disruptions were culturally cataclysmic:  

 

In Du Bois’s analysis, a negative achievement of American slavery was the upheaval of the social institutions and cultural foundations that existed in the African fatherlands. (p40)

 

2.  In his analysis of the stereotype of blacks as “shiftless” Du Bois writes: 

 

 

“Du Bois shows how behaviors that would ordinarily be explained by racial stereotypes are actually rational because oppression provides few incentives to act otherwise.  To be an efficient slave was to act irrationally because it increased the power of one’s oppressor.” (p41-42)

 

“Du Bois’s race analysis is dynamic because it stresses how historical specificity and developmental tendencies influence and shape race and class dynamics.  It also takes culture into account by emphasizing how social oppression creates cultural deficits among the dominated, thus encouraging cultures of domination to take hold in ways that stunt a group’s social development and its capacity to engage in collective action.”

(p44).  

“To assert dogmatically that the present distribution of culture is a fair index of the distribution of human ability and desert is to make an assertion for which there is not the slightest scientific warrant” (P. 43) Here DuBois is arguing that there is no scientific evidence of the inferiority of the Black race based on perceived cultural deficits that are pointed to in order to show this inferiority.

 

“Du Bois sought to explicate the human condition by interrogating the color line in America and globally (48).”

“He argued that for the new science of sociology to be scientific it had to be based on empirical data rather than armchair theorizing and what he called ‘car window sociology,’ quick and superficial generalizations about complex social phenomena like the impressions one might gather by glancing at scenes through the window of a fast-moving automobile.” (Morris p.25)

“Therefore, for Du Bois, economic exploitation, the lack of political power, and the absences of education determined racial inequality and not inherited race traits or some other essentialist racial characteristics.” (Morris p.39)

These quotes sum up the chapter. The first quote focuses on Du Bois’ somewhat novel commitment to empiricism rather than unsubstantiated theories. The second captures the point of his study, to frame the conditions for Black Americans in light of the oppression they endured rather than as an outcome of their race.

Kendi, I. X. (2019). How to be an antiracist. Random House.

 

“The color line produced diminished wages for black farm laborers; it also controlled spaces their bodies occupied and the absence of justice they experienced in the courts and the public square.”

“Du Bois was clear that cultural degradation did not arise from biological or culturally transmitted traits. Rather, it sprang from an oppression that kept blacks illiterate and uneducated and from the narrow horizons inherent in the experiences  of people too poor to travel in Jim Crow cars and too illiterate to read the books that would enable the imagination to soar.” (Morris, pg 41)

While Du Bois is not guilty of this accusation, the reality remains that many did use this mental bait and switch to continue to justify the outcomes of racial inequality. Morris goes on to clearly distinguish in WEB DuBois’s work the role of biological race in the creation of shared physical features as well as the vastly more significant role of “common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striving together for certain ideals of life.” (Morris, quoting Du Bois, pg 32) Morris does an excellent job of clarifying four distinct relationships between variables: physical difference can be inherited through common blood, there is often a backwards correlation between conditions and race (an individual may be poor because his parents were slaves), there is not a forward causation (an individual cannot be blamed for being unemployed because they are black), and there is a strong correlation and causation between racial inequity and racist policies. Morris explains “Du Bois formulated a sociology of race showing that racial hierarchies rested on edifices of power, discrimination, and entrenched oppression.” (Morris, pg 35) Also, “the condition of bondage and inferiority was a political accomplishment created through codes, laws, and economic contracts.” (Morris, pg 39) It is clear that Morris places the same emphasis on the deliberate maintaining of racial inequity through policy choices rather than the inevitable outcome of inferiority as Kendi does. 

“For Du Bois mental and spiritual differences have historical and social causes that are not reducible to biological racial differences. In fine, he takes these causes to be causally independent of biological race facts” (p. 35).

Emancipated slaves were economically dependent on White masters by entering exploitative arrangements of debt peonage and sharecropping that kept them perennially in debt and able to live only a “hand to mouth” existence. Without the vote, legal protections, and education, the black masses trapped by caste were defenseless neoslaves within a new system of oppression (p.39).

Du Bois: p.34-35- First, as to sheer physical heredity, are the Black races degenerate or undeveloped specimens of humanity? The answer to this is clear and unequivocal and has never for a moment been disputed by any scientific evidence; the Negro races are from every physical standpoint full and normally developed men; their stance and muscular development, their keenness of sense and their physical measurement show absolutely no variation from the European type sufficient to base any theory of essentially human differences upon.

“When analyzing terminology used by Du Bois over a century ago, some contemporary scholars have tended to unwittingly blame Du Bois for not using social constructionist language that had not been invented. It was possible for Du Bois and other scholars in the early twentieth century to use a vocabulary not meant to convey essentialism, even though today no constructivist would use it. Hence there is a need for caution against a contemporary reading of what Du Bois should have been writing about in those times, given the current vocabularies avail- able to scholars writing today.” (Morris, 2015, pg. 30)

Morris, Aldon. The Scholar Denied : W. E. B. du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology, University of California Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usmmaine-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1882078.

Quote 2 “Du Bois headed in a completely different direction: he formulated a sociology of race showing that racial hierarchies rested on edifices of power, discrimination, and entrenched oppression.”

Morris, Aldon. The Scholar Denied : W. E. B. du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology, University of California Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usmmaine-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1882078.

Morris, Aldon. The Scholar Denied : W. E. B. du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology, University of California Press, 2015. ProQuest Ebook Central, http://ebookcentral.proquest.com/lib/usmmaine-ebooks/detail.action?docID=1882078.