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Philosophy 308: The American Phil. Heritage J. Kegley
William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963)[1]
BiographyDuBois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts and died in Ghana, Africa. He attended FiskUniversity (AmericanNegroUniversity in Nashville, Tennessee) and then studied at Harvard under Royce, Santayana and James. It was James who steered him away from Philosophy to Sociology and History. His goal became a systematic analysis of human activities and behavior and a pragmatic, philosophical exploration of the facts of lived experience.
The Souls of Black Folk (1903) In this work he argued that most (white) American formed mistaken opinions about black people without any actual knowledge of their lives. Black people, he argued, live behind a metaphorical veil which acts like a two-way mirror; the transparent allowing black people to observe white people unaware and the reflective side preventing white people from returning the gaze of black observers. Du Bois thought this “double vision” placed black people in an epistemologically superior position since black people can clearly see the lives, characters, and situations of white people, while white people cannot do the same with black people. There is also suffering generated for black folks by this “double consciousness.” This entails a 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. The “double consciousness” also represents the unreconciled struggle between the black person’s American and “Negro” sides.
Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil (1920) continues this theme and in the chapter, “The Souls of White Folk,” he emphasizes the epistemologically superior position the veil affords him, namely, to see white folk in all their “nakedness.” Both literally and metaphorically, black people often were in the position, as house servants and caretakers, to see the “inside” of the lives of the white folk. This links knowledge to social locationand allows those on the lowest rung of the social ladder to gain the best possible knowledge of those at its top. DuBois claims that at the heart of “whiteness” is “ownership of other things and people.” He illustrates this with the example of World War I which he explains as a war between white nations over who will be allowed to exploit the darker nations. The theory with which Euro-whites operate, argues DuBois, is that “it is the duty of white Europe to divide up the darker world and administer it for Europe’s own good.”
Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (1940) switches from the dual vision metaphor to descriptions of “The White World” as enveloping “The Colored World Within.” He turns white supremacy on its head by arguing that black people are superior to white people in all areas of white pride: beauty, intelligence, creativity, spirituality, and cultural achievement. He is trying to demonstrate that the allegedly objectively superior characteristics of white people are matters of personal opinion (“ I hate straight features”) or the source of great suffering (White achievement has produced horrific wars, industrial drudgery, and capitalist exploitation). He hopes to get white people to see themselves from the perspectives of those whom they oppress in the hope that this will eliminate racist beliefs and practices.) He also argues that black people ought to embrace their segregation (which is a reality) thoughtfully developing black churches, schools, banks, and other institutions that would improve black people’s lives. One needs to become self-sufficient by planting secure centers of Negro co-operative efforts and particularly power to “make us (black people) spiritually free for initiative and creation in other and wider fields.
The Status of Race-“The Conservation of Races.” (1897) –In this essay Du Bois
argues that the elimination of distinctions between the races would be a damaging mistake. He rejects the notion that physical, biological characteristics neatly divide people into different races. There is as much variation of skin color, hair texture, cranial capacity, and other physical characteristics within any particular race as there is between different racial groups. Race as a concept has continual reality because it has greatly effected and continues to affect the lives of people of all races. If the details of so-called “real life” are to be understood, then the concept of race must be retained. “Races,” argues DuBois it relevant to both past and future. Some races have had an opportunity to give to “civilization the full spiritual message which they are capable of giving; and now it the turn of other races.
The Gift of Black Folk: The Negroes in the Making of America. In this book Du
Bois details the role of black folks in early exploration of America, in bringing tobacco, cotton, sweet potatoes and peanuts, in providing labor and in fighting wars. They have given America its distinctive, homegrown form of music and a particular style of spirituality filled with sensuality, joy, generosity and forgiveness. Black women have made a unique contribution in nurturing her children and those of her masters and black women’s freedom leads to freedom for all women. Particularly important is the Negro contribution to democracy-“one cannot think…of democracy in the modern world without reference to the American Negro.” The United States cannot be understood apart from race because it was the presence of black slaves in America that forced the country to ask whether it would attempt to live up to its ideal of freedom for all people. The Negro Problem remains the problem for the future of democracy and the United States.
[1] Drawn from Shannon Sullivan, “W.E.B. Du Bois 1868-1963” in The Blackwell Guide to American Philosophy, edited Marsoobian & Ryder. 2004. 199-209.