DU BOIS
We first break from the “holy trinity” with W.E.B. Du Bois (born 1868, Great Barrington, Massachusetts, U.S. – died 1963, Accra, Ghana). We’ll read a number of his works, but we won’t cover them in the order of their publication. Instead, we’ll generally follow a historical chronology of some of his main empirical objects. For example, we’ll read excerpts from Black Reconstruction (1935) before we read excerpts from The Philadelphia Negro (1899) only because slavery and the Civil War happened before the data collected in Philadelphia. The short biography by Elliott Rudwick should help you better understand Du Bois’s intellectual evolution as well as the particular standpoints from which he articulated a wealth of sociological insights.
AMERICAN SLAVERY AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM
Du Bois. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. (pp. 3-54)
Du Bois’s analysis of slavery in the antebellum South helps us better understand the significance of Black labor in the development of global capitalism. According to Du Bois, slavery helped solidify the color line and it paradoxically endured in a nation that celebrated equality and consent. Slavery’s long history can be partially explained by its global economic significance in the nineteenth century. Capitalism in America and across Western Europe depended on this seemingly anomalous institution. Slavery simply and unsurprisingly drove down the cost of important commodities. After making the case that capitalists and workers across the industrializing world existed on a foundation of Black labor, Du Bois unpacks the internal dynamics of slavery in the American South. He starts at the bottom of the racial-labor hierarchy with Black workers. Du Bois is clear: the enslaved constituted the most exploited and degraded workers in America. Just above the color line, we find the largest population in the South: poor whites. This was mostly a population of economic outcasts, but a significant minority of poor whites found employment as slave overseers, slave drivers, slave dealers, and slave police. Lastly, Du Bois details the planter class, a small and exclusive group with immense concentrations of property and power. White workers certainly benefited from the color line, but not as much as the planters did. Their property and power clearly depended on a racial division of labor.
RETHINKING CLASS STRUGGLE
Du Bois. 1935. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. (pp. 55-70, 121-6, 670-5, 694-708)
Du Bois argues that the Civil War brought an end to slavery in the South through the general strike of Black labor. With increased opportunities to run away during the conflict, more and more enslaved people escaped plantations and ran to federal military camps for refuge. The Union eventually permitted these fugitives to labor in the camps before they finally let them fight in the war (along with “free” Black people from the North). Only after realizing they couldn’t win the war without Black warriors did the North seriously commit to abolition. Thus, it’s fair to say that Black labor ended slavery. However, this wasn’t total freedom. A post-slavery racial order quickly set and it looked remarkably like the one found under slavery: white planters were replaced by a white landholding/capitalist class and labor remained separated by the color line. In addition to receiving greater material rewards than Black labor (e.g., higher wages and better-funded schools), white labor enjoyed a “public and psychological wage” of being white. Black labor, on the other hand, tended to suffer an “inferiority complex.” White domination permeated all spheres of the postbellum South (e.g., economy, government, and culture) and new forces of racial oppression emerged (e.g., KKK, lynchings, and chain gangs). The new economic order emphasized both Black exploitation (white capitalists wanted to drive Black people into work) and Black exclusion (white labor wanted to drive Black people out of work).
RACISM AND SO-CALLED FREE LABOR
Du Bois. 1899. The Philadelphia Negro. (pp. 97-8, 109-18, 126-41, 145-6, 343-7)
Du Bois. 1953. “Negroes and the Crisis of Capitalism in the United States.”
Writing about Black people in Philadelphia in the late nineteenth century, Du Bois maps a hierarchy that looks similar to the ones found in the pre- and post- Civil War South. America is structured by a stubborn racialized economic order that tends to put white exploiters at the top, Black labor at the bottom, and white labor in the middle. But why is this the case in industrial Philadelphia? Du Bois highlights three social forces that push Black wage labor down: 1) longstanding inequalities in education, training, and labor market experience, 2) fierce inter-racial competition (e.g., more privileged white workers and white unions organized against Black progress), and 3) the often-subtle discrimination of whites who hire and promote workers. These forces can be seen across a number of industries. Unsurprisingly, this hierarchy concentrates a lot of suffering in Black neighborhoods. Meanwhile, white labor suffers less. This massive group in the middle is exploited, but they clearly enjoy more material and symbolic rewards than Black labor. Of course, white capitalists benefit tremendously from this arrangement. The color line drives wages down overall and it helps neutralize class struggle. Looking forward, Du Bois suggests the color line may “bend and loosen,” but it will not break anytime soon.
SEEING WHITE SUPREMACY
Du Bois. 1923. “The Superior Race.”
Du Bois. 1903. “Of Our Spiritual Strivings.”
Du Bois. 1920. “The Souls of White Folk.”
We close Du Bois with some essays that help clarify white supremacy. He begins with a critique of “White Imperial Industry,” a Frankenstein-like monster made possible by the oppression, exploitation, and exclusion of dark bodies. And here’s the ugly truth concealed by that monster: white people are not biologically, intellectually, or morally superior to people of color, but they enjoy real advantages at the expense of nonwhite people’s suffering. According to Du Bois, this truth is mystified by a sort of “religion” of white superiority. This ideology celebrates whiteness and problematizes Blackness. White people look down on Black people with pity and contempt. Their vision is obstructed by the color line, which acts like a great veil separating white and Black subjectivity. Du Bois tells us that people behind this veil harbor a double consciousness or a “twoness” of souls, thoughts, and strivings. While the veil is certainly a burden, it also comes with a gift of second-sight. People of color, and Black people in particular, can more easily see the truth of white supremacy. And this supremacy is a force to be reckoned with. White civilization was built, and continues to build itself, upon the exploitation of dark bodies across the world. In the end, the future is clear for Du Bois: the fight against white supremacy must be a global one.
BONUS VIDEO!
Atlantic illustration of the veil and more.