The Souls of Black Folk Review

Edit: I found the earlier post on this same subject. It was entitled Comments on Souls of Black Folk and for some reason I couldn't locate it. Enjoy!

I thought I had already added this to my blog but apparently I forgot to do it a few months ago. I read Du Bois's Souls of Black Folk over the summer and here's what I thought:

Du Bois's great work, The Souls of Black Folk, is quite an interesting read. Like most books written by blacks in the 19th-early 20th century, it uses the language of that era and shares the Western world's general dismissals of African and 'uncultured' African-Americans. Since DuBois was far more progressive than Booker T. Washington and advocated a more radical approach to combating Jim Crow and American racism instead of accommodation, and because Du Bois adroitly pointed out the triple paradox of Booker T. Washington's philosophy of submission, I still love and respect this Haitian brotha (his father was a Haitian mulatto). The triple paradox is posted below. How could blacks do anything that Booker T. Washington claims without the political rights, higher education, and overt resistance to entrenched institutionalized and personal racism?

1. He is striving nobly to make Negro artisans, businessmen and property-owners; but it is utterly impossible, under modern competitive methods, for workingmen and property-owners to defend their rights and exist without the right of suffrage.
2. He insists on thrift and self-respect, but at the same time counsels a silent submission to civic inferiority such as is bound to sap the manhood of any race in the long run.
3. He advocates common-school and industrial training, and depreciates institutions of higher learning; but neither the Negro common-schools, nor Tuskegee itself, could remain open a day were it not for teachers trained in Negro colleges, or trained by their graduates.

DuBois would later redeem himself and learn to appreciate more of African history and cultures later on in the 1940s when he published his Africa and the World. In addition to his constant references to the 'savagery' of African negroes and the re-enslaved blacks of the post-Reconstruction South, he also seems to fail to appreciate the importance and revolutionary impact of the Haitian Revolution. In Souls of Black Folk, he refers to one of the most revolutionary periods in history as a 'Terror' and, inadvertently or not, undermines its importance and legitimacy.

Moreover, there are periods in which he appears to support the institution of slavery by arguing for it's civilizing effect on Africans and the belilef that American slavery, immoral and destructive, was still relatively benign compared to other forms of slavery in the Americas and the rest of the world. What difference does that make? American slavery may have taken fewer lives than slavery in, say, 19th century Cuba, Brazil, and the Caribbean, but that obviously doesn't justify slavery in the United States. There are other occasions where Du Bois continually refers to the 'savagery' of African-Americans, inherited from their African ancestors, demonstrating that Du Bois, like Booker T. Washington and most African-American leaders and intellectuals of that era, were at least ambivalent if not supportive of European imperialism in Africa.

On the other hand, Du Bois uses most of the chapters to analyze reasons for African-American poverty in the Black Belt (region of the South where the majority of the population is black), focusing on the county of Dougherty, GA. He goes out of his way to explain the vices of Black Americans and the problem of the color line (he refers to it many times as "The Veil") as a product of both color prejudice and Jim Crow from the white majority and faults of African-Americans themselves, so as to avoid completely "blaming the white man" for all of the problems facing black folks. Of course, in reality almost all the problems facing blacks in the South are due to the white man. In the beginning of the book (really, all of it) Du Bois explains how Reconstruction failed to give the Negro his 40 acres and a mule and provide education. He examines the Freedmen's Bureau and the positive aspects of Reconstruction in terms of building common schools and sending teachers, etc.

Du Bois goes on to elucidate how the Compromise of 1877, government mismanagement prior to that, and the South's institutionalization of sharecropping, Jim Crow segregation, and relinquishing blacks of suffrage and political rights created the terrible living conditions for blacks immediately after the departure of federal armies. Although Reconstruction was a step in the right direction in terms of providing some African-Americans with land and education, establishing schools and whatnot, but the federal government's willingness to abandon the freed population while it was still vulnerable to white reversals of the Reconstruction constitutional amendments left blacks between the Devil and the deep blue sea. Soon they couldn't vote, it was nearly impossible for them to purchase their own land, they were exploiting by the landowners and Northern merchants and carpetbaggers who migrated South after the Civil War, and blacks were forced into patronage relationships with 'respectable, upper-class whites who would provide them employment as tenant farmers and vouch for them in cases involving other whites.

This period also included the beginning of mass incarceration for blacks (regardless of their innocence, their labor was exploited in chain gangs as another source of cheap labor for Southern states) who fought these customs and laws. Exemplified by vagrancy laws and the stereotypes of lazy black slaves, any African-American who didn't work or appear to have employment (usually employment from a white landowner or businessman) they could be arrested and forced to work on public works or agriculture for the state (like the pre-French Revolutionary practice of corvee, which required French peasants to dedicate some period every year to working on public projects, etc. for the 1st estate.

Du Bois gained first-hand experience of the lives of southern blacks through his travels and work as a teacher at Negro schools in Georgia. Born in Massachusetts and highly educated, Bu Bois occasionally takes time to show off his classical education (use of Latin, references to Greek mythology and erudite literary allusions and metaphors) and uses this to measure the level of 'civilization' he saw whilst in the South. Though I agree with Du Bois about the importance of college-educated blacks and some aspects of the Talented Tenth theory, his definition of education is very Eurocentric and patriarchal (women are not worthy of higher education, it would appear). Nevertheless, as he astutely observes, Booker T. Washington is wrong (Washington is right about blacks not needing to know Greek and Latin, though) about blacks not pursuing higher education if they're capable and have the option since these talented blacks (the so-called Talented Tenth of ministers, doctors, lawyers, businessman and teachers, especially teachers) will become the teachers at Negro common schools and colleges such as Tuskeegee, Washington's famous school established to teach African-Americans agricultural and mechanical labor. However, Du Bois, due to his incredibly high education (he studied at Harvard and abroad in Europe) is unrealistic and his classical education does seem out of touch of reality for most Americans in general in the early 20th century (who could afford to study at Harvard, learn Latin and Greek, and multiple other languages in that era?)

However, I must point out some flaws with Du Bois's Talented Tenth theory. Although middle class and professional African-Americans undoubtedly play a vital role in black communities and help uplift the remaining 9/10ths because of their skills, services, and influence in the community, but to believe that all 'talented' blacks would do such a thing is naive. Many will ignore or distance themselves from poor and lower-class blacks and live in their own neighborhood aristocracies, which Du Bois observed himself in Northern cities and some Southern cities. Indeed, while describing Southern urban blacks, Du Bois points out how the Talented Tenth often lived apart from other blacks. For example, a lower-class white neighborhood may divide the prosperous and poor black communities or the Talented Tenth tend to live in cities while the majority of the black population at the time (1903, before the Great Migration in the 20s and 30s) resided in rural areas and would only come into contact with Talented Tenth only through the substandard Negro common schools in the country. Furthermore, the idea of the Talented Tenth saving the black majority is elitist and denies the importance of subaltern leadership developing from the bottom. Lower class and upper class blacks should obviously cooperate as they did during the Civil Rights Movement but to argue that everything should occur under the Talented Tenth's 'civilizing' effects and influences seems undemocratic and very dangerous.

As for other interesting things in the book? I was touched by the death of Du Bois' infant son, vividly described in one of the later chapters of the text. I also appreciated his praise for Negro spirituals as the foundation of American music and the importance of the Negro in American folk music. His chapter on Negro religion and African influences on the African-American Christianity also emphasize the significance of the Church in Black America, which essentially provides moral education, a community center, and religious salvation. Like an expert sociologist, Du Bois' time in Dougherty County and the various inhabitants he encountered are flawlessly analyzed.

He explains how the sharecropping system forced most of the black inhabitants into debt because they were required to grow cotton and would often get their supplies and food for exorbitant amounts from the whites and Russian Jews who immigrated to the South (they purchased land and operated stores where blacks were sold seed, food, etc. at high prices and would only accept cotton as payment after the harvest. Of course this prevented most African-American farmers from growing their own food and diversifying their crops, which meant the fall in the price of cotton in 1898 and other fluctuations in the price of cotton sent many a black family spiraling into debt. And of course there were many instances of whites cheating blacks out of pay, using the threat of lynching and the police to intimidate blacks, and the white government's underfunding of black schools and exploitation of black workers usually required their children to also toil in the field instead of staying in school.

So the combination of the aforementioned factors explain the low living standards of blacks, not intellecual inferiority or laziness, as many whites of the time believed. The few that could purchase land or pursue a profession in the cities, did as soon as possible. But the system was designed to limit success for African-Americans in every conceivable way, which according to Du Bois inculcated feelings of doubt, humiliation, and despair among African Americans which contribute to criminality, laziness (why would poor black farmers in debt work harder when they'll still be in debt slavery?) and in some cases, radicalism. Interestingly, Du Bois argues that the Negro in the North was more radical than those of the South due to their anger from being forced to leave their homes and relatives due to white prejudice and the fact that they had greater access to education and political rights. Southern blacks, on the other hand, tended to choose hypocritical compromise, best exemplified by Booker T. Washington and devotees of his 1895 Atlanta Compromise Speech. Northern blacks, such as Ida B. Wells and Du Bois worked on anti-lynching campaigns, helped establish the NAACP, etc. Now I don't entirely agree with Du Bois's assertion though.

His theory of double consciousness for Black Americans is excellent though. Blacks have to live as Negroes and Americans. They're incessantly perceived as inferior and facing closed doors of opportunity for being black, and always looking at themselves through the eyes of others. Blacks internalize the contempt and perceptions of others for them through this double consciousness. As Du Bois explains, "The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self...He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and and American without being spit upon by his fellows, without having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face." I agree one hundred percent with this as one of the main themes of African-American identity and history, this struggle to be accepted without losing one's African heritage. Indeed, African-Americans best exemplify the American 'spirit' of liberty since they have experienced the worst in the process of pursuing life, liberty and happiness throughout American history.

I must also add his chapter on Alexander Crummell to the list of interesting and positive parts of the book. I had never heard of this important figure in African-American religious history and his encounter with the racist Episcopalian bishop of Philadelphia in the antebellum period is priceless. Sent to Philadelphia to start another church among that city's black population, Bishop Onderdonk tells him, "I will receive you into this diocese on one condition: no Negro priest can sit in my church convention, and no Negro church must ask for representation there." Crummell refuses to accept those conditions and starts works at a chapel in New York instead. This is truly an admirable move on the part of Crummell, who refused to accommodate racism from his own denomination.

In conclusion, Du Bois's oft-cited 'masterpiece' is a nuanced affair and contains many of the intellectual flaws associated with academic racism and the age of European imperialism in Africa and Asia. His skills as a sociologist and historian are displayed in every chapter as he writes on the economic, social, religious, and historical obstacles to black achievement in the United States   in the early 20th century. However, as I stated before, I found him too Eurocentric, elitist, and too willing to place blame on African-Americans for the terrible social conditions in which they live. Resistance has always been a cornerstone of African-Americans and I don't particularly agree with his characterization of Southern blacks as submissive and compromising, although many were. All in all, Du Bois wrote a fascinating collection of essays on African Americans that correctly predicted that the problem of the 20th century would be the color line. The Negro problem played an undeniable role in nearly every circumstance imaginable in US foreign policy with Latin America, the Caribbean, and Africa, domestic social and economic policies, the Civil Rights Movement, and defining the supposed essence of American nationhood, freedom.