March 1998 ________________________________
Souls of Black Folk A 1998 Revisitation In 1998 we commemorate the 130th anniversary of the birth of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois and the 35th of his death. This year, too, we mark the 95th anniversary of the publication of his seminal work, (0376) The Souls of Black Folk and the 30th anniversary of its first reprinting by the Johnson Reprint Corporation. This book, which we consider to be one of the most significant Black books published in this country, speaks to us today as meaningfully as it did at the beginning of the century. W.E.B. Du Bois <http://www.queenhyte.com/dobb/images/du_bois.jpg> W.E.B. Du Bois (From the archives of and used with the permission of the Corporate Headquarters of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., Baltimore, Md.) Tony Monteiro, in an article entitled "W.E.B. Du Bois: Scholar, Scientist, and Activist <http://members.tripod.com/~DuBois/mont.html> " (archives, the W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual University), says that this book is a unique Du Boisian effort to philosophically address the problem of race and the failure of American pragmatism to provide a philosophical framework for a social science of race. Monteiro goes on to point out that Du Bois had studied philosophy under William James and George Santayana at Harvard. Continuing his philosophical studies at the University of Berlin, Du Bois concentrated on the thought of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German philosopher who was one of the most influential thinkers of the time. We are able to conclude that Du Bois built the philosophical infrastructure for his phenomenology of race from his study of Hegel's The Phenomenology of Mind. In any case, Monteiro goes on to say that The Souls of Black Folk can be viewed as a narrative with Hegel, as well as an inversion of Hegelian idealism. In summing up the significance of Souls Monteiro says, In the end, Souls should be looked upon as a prolegomena of a philosophy of a social science of race. When combined with The Philadelphia Negro we have the essential features of a scientific philosophy of race. Moreover, in adapting Hegel's Phenomenology of Mind to the specificities of the U.S., and in inverting Hegelian idealism, U.S. social science is equipped with intellectual tools to understand the unique complexities of class and race in the U.S. Arguably, Du Bois' adaptation of the phenomenology of the mind to the specifics of race in America is not only prolegomenous, as Monteiro suggests, but entails a central psychic postulate which is as valid at the end of the century as it was in 1903. The Souls of Black Folk is not only an enduring testimonial to the rigor of the Du Boisian mind in the analysis of the phenomenon of race but is also a matrix for ideas of succeeding generations of thinkers who have written the subject but who may have come to different conclusions as to the significance of race in the quotidian lives of African Americans. For this memoirist/ bibliographer and student of the phenomenon of race, the Du Boisian soliloquy is a paradigm for reflection. Du Bois says, . . . 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 not 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 contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness - 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. Surely, the spirit of the Black intellectual has been riven by this psychic shearing. The rift can be tracked in the writings of Black thinkers from the turn of the century to this very day. This is not to say that this torment is universally felt among Black Americans, because that is not so. There is and has always been a coterie of Blacks who do not feel any ambivalence at all as regards the matter of their race. Some Blacks find their "self" easily, without ambiguity and without the sense of "double consciousness" experienced by others. They seem to manage to absorb, or be absorbed seamlessly by the culture in which they find themselves, their race notwithstanding. Or, put in other terms, by force of will they adapt socially to the society in which they live. As we will observe further on, however, this capability, does not absolve them of the burden of guilt trips on which they are often sent by some of their ethnic fellows. As a phenomenologist of race, interested in social adaptability (or integration) as exemplified by the foregoing observation on the adaptability of some Blacks to the social context, I was taken by what seems to me to be a clinical parallel which came to my attention. I find this parallel in a response made by a physician to a question from the audience after a panel discussion on ailments of the heart, which I attended recently. The physician, who was White, was asked by a woman, who appeared to be Hispanic, to comment on the phenomenon of ethnically centered ailments. The physician, a board-certified cardiologist, responded categorically. He replied that "culture overwhelms ethnicity." To my mind, and to that of most of the laypeople in that room, he was saying that when persons move from one ethnic culture to another, the new culture dominates any propensity to ethnic-centered ailments. My fond wish is that social scientists could categorically posit such a proposition regarding the preponderance of racial tolerance over racism. Unlike those Blacks who easily adapt to multiethnic settings, there are those who isolate themselves in a Black ideological ethnic circle of consciousness that intersects with no other. Still others migrate to circles of ideological ethnic consciousnesses which intersect anywhere from marginally to concentrically with others. Du Bois anticipated this in Souls when he said that some Blacks "segregate themselves from the group-life of both White and Black, and form an aristocracy, cultured but pessimistic, whose bitter criticism stings while it points out no way of escape." The symbolic, huddled mass of freedmen which Du Bois observed in 1903 from his intellectual Mount Pisgah has dispersed over the 95 intervening years. The descendants of those seventh sons of 1903 today pursue disparate visions of the Promised Land. As the shadows lengthen in the twilight of this century, a present-day thinker cannot help but notice that, if it ever was, the Black population of America is not a monolith. There is no principle or concept that can or will ever capture the hearts of all of us. What is ironic in this ideological shift among the Black population is that the bitter criticism that stings while it points out no way of escape, and which Du Bois noted as coming from a cultured but pessimistic aristocracy that has segregated themselves from Black group-life, now comes from the Black underclass and is directed at the burgeoning Black middle class. The criticism by this alienated cohort of fellow Blacks is now the spark that generates the feelings of the twoness of soul, of thought and of unreconciled strivings that one ever feels at the twilight of the 20th century. It is the anguished, tortured consciousness of being Black and middle class. A poignant example of this came to attention no longer ago than during the PBS program Frontline, on a show entitled, "The Two Nations of Black America," telecast last month as a Black History Month feature. There we saw the "dream team": Harvard University Black Studies faculty commiserating on the "Two Nations" that are exemplified today in the Black Community. Most poignantly we saw Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Du Bois Professor of the Humanities and chairman of the department, in genuine anguish over his privileged position vis-à-vis the "brothers" that he passes every day in the street on his way to his office in Harvard Square. Having been a beleaguered Black dean at a White college during the Black student uprising in the late 1960s, I was intrigued by Professor Gates's report of his own activism while he was a student at Yale in the 1960s. It was an equally intriguing experience to perceive his obvious anguish in responding to his tortured conscience at being Black and comfortable as a tenured professor at Harvard University. As I listened to the comments of Professor Edley of the Law School, I could not help but think of his former colleague, Derrick Bell, who, as a matter of conscience could not abide as a professor of law at Harvard, given his perception of Harvard Law School's personnel practice as regards the appointment of Blacks. The peculiar sensation of double-consciousness endures at century's end. However, the sense of always seeing one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on is now experienced from through the eyes of fellow Blacks who look on more in anger or envy, than in amused contempt and pity. EPILOGUE Works by and about W.E.B. Du Bois are enjoying wide availability on the World Wide Web. One significant new resource is the W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual University <http://members.tripod.com/~DuBois> . (There are others that we have not yet reviewed.) It was developed by Jennifer Wager, a graduate of the Black Studies department at the Ohio State University. Its mission is to serve as a clearing house for information on Du Bois and to spur intelligent scholarship and discussion of his life, legacy, and works. This bibliographer who has a particular interest in Du Bois' thought as a metaphoric source, considers this source to be an excellent one and has arrogated to himself the status of visiting scholar at the W.E.B. Du Bois Virtual University. A few of the files in this archive which I have found to be particularly useful include: * A biographical essay on Du Bois by Tony Monteiro * A bibliography of dissertations on Du Bois * A biography of Du Bois by Jenni Wager * A bibliography of books about Du Bois * A large number of articles about Du Bois * Profiles of several Du Bois scholars. Also, Souls Of Black Folk is available in its entirety, through a link to Columbia University. ________________________________ Copyright © 1998 by Harry B. Dunbar <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> . All rights reserved. _______________________________________________ Marxism-Thaxis mailing list Marxism-Thaxis@lists.econ.utah.edu To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism-thaxis
