The Legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois
Wednesday, April 2, at noon, U.S. Eastern timeWhat is the intellectual legacy of W.E.B. Du Bois? What are professors' experiences in teaching The Souls of Black Folk and other works by Du Bois?
Long treated mainly as a founding father of the civil-rights movement, W.E.B. Du Bois has been rediscovered as one of the most versatile figures ever to emerge from academe. A historian, sociologist, novelist, and journalist, Du Bois was the public intellectual par excellance. This year marks the centenary of his book The Souls of Black Folk and his essay "The Talented Tenth" -- landmark works in African-American literature and intellectual history. Another work of his, The Negro Church, a sociological study published in 1903, is being reprinted for the first time. What is the state of Du Bois's legacy in the 21st century? What is the relation among the worldviews found in his work, with its mixture of Victorian sensibility, Pan-Africanism, and Marxist ideology? Was Du Bois an elitist at heart, or a radical democrat -- or possibly both? And how do faculty members today teach Souls, and what reactions do they receive from students?
» The Centennial of 'Souls' (4/4/2003)
David Levering Lewis, a professor of history at Rutgers University at New Brunswick, has won the Pulitzer Prize twice -- once for W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race, 1868-1919 (1993) and again for W.E.B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919-1963 (2000), both published by Henry Holt. He is also the author of Prisoners of Honor: The Dreyfus Affair (Morrow, 1973), When Harlem Was in Vogue (Knopf, 1981), and The Race to Fashoda: European Colonialism and African Resistance in the Scramble for Africa (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1987), and is the editor of The Portable Harlem Renaissance Reader (Viking, 1994) as well as W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader (Henry Holt, 1995). On April 11, he will deliver the keynote address, "W.E.B. Du Bois: From Prophet to Pariah and Back," at a centennial symposium on The Souls of Black Folk to be held at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Mr. Lewis will respond to questions and comments about Du Bois on Wednesday, April 2, at noon, U.S. Eastern time. Advance questions are encouraged and may be posted now.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
Two books dominated the American discussion of race in 1903. One was Thomas Dixon's The Leopard's Spots, a work of fiction about the Reconstruction era that almost no one reads any more -- though the author did leave his mark on history by helping to romanticize the Ku Klux Klan, thereby breathing new life into it. The other big title of the day was The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, a collection of essays that has worn a lot better over time. While Dixon's book is technically a novel, it reads now like propaganda, of a fairly hamfisted sort. Du Bois, by contrast, was writing in an unmistakably political way, criticizing both white culture and black leadership in a fashion designed to upset many readers. Yet reading the book now, a hundred years later, what you notice is Du Bois's language, how complex his allusions are, the way he sounds like the consumate Victorian intellectual while also laying out the terms of a civil rights movement that would take years to crystallize.
It's a book that rewards more than one reading. The conversations it has inspired over the decades included some intense arguments over how fair Du Bois is (or isn't) to his opponents. And then there's the passage on "double consciousness" - which some have taken to be a definitive concept describing African-American life, while others have argued that it tells us more about Du Bois's state of mind as a black academic in the Jim Crow South than anything else.
In short, the discussion it provoked in 1903 never really ended. So we'll continue it here today in the company of David Levering Lewis. The fact that Mr. Lewis's biography of W. E. B. Du Bois fills two very large volumes is fitting. After all, Du Bois was born during Reconstruction and died immediately before the historic March on Washington in 1963.
Besides inviting questions for Mr. Lewis, I want to encourage people to submit comments about their experience in teaching Souls. How do students respond to it now? Are there aspects of the book that seem hopelessly dated? Or, conversely, are there things in the book that seem more cogent now than they might have looked to readers a century ago?
Question from Scott McLemee:
Thanks very much for making yourself available to answer questions, Mr. Lewis. The other day, you said something about a gathering where you would be doing an impersonation of Du Bois. At the time, I thought you were joking -- but a comment by a friend indicates that there might be something to it. Is there?
David Levering Lewis:
Yes. One of the most annoying things about a lecture is when the speaker, however engrossing the text might be from which he is reading, needs to stop and say "quote, unquote" or moves his fingers up and down to indicate that this is quoted material. A biographer whose work I much admire who is writing the life of Eleanor Roosevelt imitates the voice of Eleanor Roosevelt impeccably. I have copied that technique, by approximating, as best I can, the voice of W.E.B. Du Bois. It indulges a bit of ham, and might be seen as slighly disreputable in some quarters, but as I have done it with a measure of success, I'll continue to do so.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
Before our session began today, we ran a few early questions by Mr. Lewis, and also got some comments from him on the interest in Du Bois stirred up by this anniversary. We'll post his remarks in a second. A number of questions have already come in, and more are welcome -- as are readers' thoughts on Du Bois.
David Levering Lewis:
It's interesting how major texts are given new life periodically. The Souls of Black Folk, as I would have thought, has been a staple of the cannon since its appearance. This annivesary commemoration has the feel of a discovery de novo, as though we're coming to Du Bois again for the first time. There's something curious about that, since some of Du Bois's statements have become so famailiar: the prediction that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of a color line, or his illuminating social psychology in describing the African-American as a person of two identities, Negro and American, and the controversy that that statement has also engendered. There's much that he wrote that has been continuously familiar. It's interesting how modern The Souls of Black Folk seems to be. I suppose that is the measure of a truly salient, cogent text: one that says things about history, about culture, about conditions in such an incisive way that those statements have a freshness as though they were uttered the day before yesterday. In many ways, though, it's seems to me that there's a double bonus to The Souls of Black Folk in these times. On the one hand, the observations about his time are happily time-bound. That is to say, much of what disturbed Du Bois, much of what he inveighed against has now been largely remedied and ameliorated. The conditions in the South that Du Bois writes about -- the sharecropping, the slavery, the ceaseless violence against people, all of that is historic. The indignities, the manyfold personal indignities that people suffered simply in the course of living their lives, not being addressed with a title, being forced to step off sidewalks, not being allowed to work to the level of their abilities, those things no longer bedevil us as a nation. That's the good part. That part of The Souls of Black Folk is a social photograph of a time that is now gone forever.
On the other hand, much of what he said is as current today as when written 100 years ago. When Du Bois emphasized the disabilities that working people labor under, when he talked about the shortcomings of a democracy that is too worshipful of money, those things are worthwhile meditating on. Finally, one would say, if it's true as one of Du Bois' Harvard professors reiterated that those who forget history are doomed to repeat it again and again, the benefit then of The Souls of Black Folk is that we have a means of remembering how far we've come, how difficult it was to get there, what price we paid along the way -- this is a incomparable service the reading of this book yields.
Question from Christopher Phelps, Ohio State University:
I am a great admirer of your historical and biographical writing. Two questions: First, I wonder whether you think the "souls" in the title of Du Bois's classic work refers simply to the dual consciousness that is by now a cliche, or whether the multitude of black personalities and psychologies represented in the essays indicate a many-sided pluralism based upon an almost infinite variation in black experiences? Second, I was struck by your comment in the Chronicle piece about the dangers of celebration occluding history on anniversary occasions, especially since the same day that I read the Chronicle piece my copy of The Crisis arrived in the mail with your excellent memorial cover article on Du Bois. I take it, therefore, you do not draw a complete line against the familiar strategy of using the occasion of anniversary dates, such as centenaries, to draw attention to important subjects?
David Levering Lewis:
It's a good question: the freight that you can put on this contruct of "souls" in Du Bois' thinking. I think that Du Bois inteneded for his "souls" construct to be fairly open-ended. I think that he hoped that it would be enriched as the society changed, that is, in the direction of pluralism. Indeed, if I'm right in thinking that Du Bois' statement about the divided self was evolutionary and really inescapably Hegelian, then we have the certain prospect of a synthesis of all that whiteness means and all that blackness means of a convergence, a coherence, and an interpenetration. This I take to be the essence of pluralism -- the mediation of duality.
Regarding your second question: No, I do not. I'm cagey about rituals of commemoration, since as you know, perhaps, my first effort at writing was a biography of Martin Luther King many years ago. Though scholarship has moved well beyond me, on the 15th of January, I still find myself participating in discussions in occasions that honor Dr. King. Oftimes, those occasions are too sentimental and a tad romantic, accompanied by music, the evocation of the "I Have a Dream" speech, and other King tag lines. All of that is fine as far as that goes but it much too often results in the Mt. Rushmore approach to the significance of the life and the underplay of the radical aspects of the life, so that the King who is more and more critical of the military-industrial complex, and of economic Darwinism is forgotten and ignored. I would resist something like that happening to Du Bois as he's now back fully in the canon. That is to say that the marvelous prose of The Souls of Black Folk and a few prophetic lines are served up as the essential Du Bois, and the Du Bois of Black Reconstruction, of sympathy towards the Soviet Union, of ever-increasing criticism of the uynbridled market economy were soft-pedaled. Whenever I think that I can play a part in fostering the full memory of the man's life and purpose I leap at the opportunity.
Question from Scott Jaschik, The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In the article, you lament the way anniversaries lead to people embracing safe ideas and ignoring potentially controversial ideas. Do you think Americans tend to do this more with regard to black leaders? People have noted that every February, political and academic leaders all talk about the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., but the emphasis is very much on his early career as opposed to the issues related to poverty and Vietnam that he spoke about toward the end of his life. Should scholars be doing more to make sure people know the breadth of the ideas of a King or a Du Bois?
David Levering Lewis:
That is a sweetheart question to me, because I can only answer at top voice: Yes, yes, and yes! And to the extent that it's very American to elide the prickly, the radical, the subversive, the controversial, to that extent the appreciation of African Americans is similarly victimized -- I think perhaps, even more so in the case of African American thinkers, doers, and of African American issues, for the compelling and rather obvious reason that race in America continues to bedevil analysis and to vex our principles and ideals.
Question from Brian Gordon, St. Louis Community College at Florissant Valley, Dept. of History:
Not so much a question as a contribution to the discussion, ending with a question:
In both my general (largely white) and my black history classes, I present the standard Washington-DuBois comparison, using Washington's 1895 Atlanta speech and DuBois's 1903 commentary as starting points; after presenting the highlights of both men's lives, I then ask students to decide whose approach to education seems, both for students a century ago AND for today, the most useful. Nearly always, not surprisingly, DuBois wins, hands down. I then go around the room and ask students what they are majoring in. Whether they are black or white, the result has always been the same---virtually all are enrolled in today's equivalent of the technical/industrial/career curricula that Washington advocated and DuBois rejected, at least for his Talented Tenth. DuBois continues to be more of an intellectual ideal in terms of his demands for immediate full political and social equality, but today's students are no less realistic than those of Washington's day in their need to put food on the table. Who else has had a similar experience in a classroom discussion?
David Levering Lewis:
That's a very nice question. It certainly comports with my own classroom experience in that regard. What is significant, though, is that when that professor polls his students today and finds that they are pursuing coursework that will put them on the technical and vocational track -- which probably means fields that Washington had no ken of, computer science, communications, etc. -- still, the important consideration here is that those students had a choice. And it was the lack of that choice that distressed Du Bois. Quite apart from the benefits of a liberal arts education as De Bois envisaged them, his concern about Washington's educational agenda was that it was to preclude anything other than vocational education for people of color. And its purpose, Du Bois suspected, with all the good will on Washington's part, was the production of a docile and cheap labor force. Du Bois would even have accepted that design, that educational and social design, to some extent, but he would have demanded reciprocity from Washington and his backers that education for the liberal arts professions be not only possible but genuinely encouraged, so that today the selection of a college concentration is a matter of choice.
Question from Joe Berry, Roosevelt Univ.:
I am to teach in the Fall, for the first time, a specialized upper division/grad class on Civil War and Reconstruction, which I am now preparing. I plan to use at least sections of DuBois' Black Reconstruction and perhaps some of his biography of John Brown. What suggestions would you have for someone who has not taught extensively from DuBois' actual texts before? (though I have taught about him and his ideas a good deal)
David Levering Lewis:
Black Reconstruction is an elephantine book, really quite huge. So my first consel is to select very carefully from its many chapters, and off the top of my head, I would say by all means recommend to your students the final chapter on historiography, which is such a powerful document and really goes to the essence of Du Bois's reasons for writing the book. Obviously, he wished to undermine the regnant school of historiography for his day-- the Dunning School of Reconstruction -- and that final chapter explicitly rebuts the prejudices of the Dunning School. Then the chapters on white labor and black proletariat are, of course, flawed in that Du Bois gave a very schematic reading of the class conditions in the reconstruction South. He read a great deal more of Marx into the political possibilites of that moment. Nonetheless, those two chapters are revisionist in the best sense of the craft. John Brown is a wonderful document and you could look upon it perhaps as a shorthand way of accessing much of the guts of the argument to be found in the gigantic Black Reconstruction. So perhaps as an introduction or as a legitimate Cliff's Note, you might select certain pages from Du Bois's biography of John Brown.
I am sure the questioner is aware of the source of what is today being called whiteness studies that tracks back to voices of "wages of whiteness" construct. That is a seminal idea and the questioner would want to underscore its significance to his students.
Question from Penny, urban university:
Does "double conciousness" have a relationship to Black Religious Life?
David Levering Lewis:
It's one of the bonuses of having written a biography that is widely appreciated that so many of the questions it inspires catch me somewhat quizzical as to what I think is the proper response. It would help if the question was a little more etched. If there is a suggestion that the religious energies of African-Americans flow in a different channel than those of mainstream America, then I suppose that one could apply, cagily, the double-consciousness concept. If what one means by that is that religion, being such a profound measure of peoples' experience, then, to be sure, the historic experience of African-Americans has not been identical to that of most Euro-Americans, and therefore, the concept of duality is perhaps useful or applicable. I suspect, however, that the questioner has more in mind than is immediately evident in the language of the question.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
A couple of things have been submitted that look less like questions than comments drawn from the experience of teaching Souls in the classroom. I'll post them without asking for Mr. Lewis's comment, and renew the invitation for readers to submit remarks about how students respond to Du Bois.
Comment from Doug Bennett, President, Earlham College:
At Earlham College, we distributed copies of The Souls of Black Folk to all students, faculty and staff in August 2001 (at the very beginning of the last academic year), and invited every member of our community to participate in a discussion of the book. We were all struck at its contemporary relevance. It's hard to think of another work of social criticism that feels so fresh today. Questions that arose: In a United States now with more complicated patterns of race and ethnicity, how might DuBois talk about "double consciousness" or "two-ness" today? And, should multicultural education aim at overcoming double consciousness, or at spreading it to all, or what?
Comment from Matt Rolph, Plymouth State College (oz.plymouth.edu/~m_rolph):
I was strongly attracted to DuBois' rhetorical authority and intellect when I first read his work. I still often find him eminently quotable, discover again that he's expressed something perfectly. Now that I'm a teacher, however, I struggle with including him on my syllabi. How can I create an attractive discussion opportunity around W.E.B. DuBois (or Ezra Pound, for example) for an undergraduate class without being seen as promoting the types of views that DuBois held towards the end of his life? Or shouldn't I care? I'd love to hear from the more experienced teachers among us on this issue. Thank you for the opportunity.
Question from Dr. Terry Oatts, Georgia Southern University:
In his book, W.E.B. Du Bois and American Political Thought, Adolph Reed, Jr. suggests that much of African-American intellectual thought is guilty of what he describes as "racial vindicationism." He asserts that Du Bois is a prime example of this racial vindicationism. I would like to know what Dr. Levering Lewis thinks of Reed's assertion. Also, Reed suggests that Du Bois retained his Talented Tenth ideology throughout his lifetime. The consensus has long been that Du Bois repudiated the Talented Tenth philosophy.
David Levering Lewis:
The second question first: In a formal way, it is certainly true that in 1948, Du Bois explicitly abjured the concept of the Talented Tenth. On that occasion, he reproached a very exclusive professional organization of African Americans for what he saw as their class ego-centrism, and their failure to provide forceful leadership. He interestingly and perhaps somewhat mischeviously invited them to read Karl Marx and take their views for leadership from Marx's text. This group consisted of African American lawyers, doctors, college presidents -- a group that Du Bois must have known in 1948 would not look favorably upon his recommendation. However, the idea of leadership as the compelling obligation with advantage, with position, with influence, with a margin of maneuver in the society was something that always animated Du Bois, even as he became increasingly marxisant. So, you can see both the renunciation of Du Bois of the talented tenth construct, and the subsistence of the eseence of the idea, even in to Marxism. The first part of the question: since I haven't looked at the book in question, but have written about Du Bois rather comprehensively, much of the knowledge that was once at my fingertips has dropped away. If by racial vindicationism, you mean that Du Bois excused the deficiencies and shortfalls of his group at the expense of the majority group and that he made demands on mainstream America to remediate the alleged disadvantages of black America, then I would say Du Bois is indeed not guilty as charged by Adolph Reed. Some over-statement conceeded in the huge Du Boisian oeuvre, in the main Du Bois's analysis of the racial and economic unfairness of the American social contract seems to me vindicated decade by decade.
Question from Dr. Terry Oatts, Georgia Southern University:
Recently, I successfully defended my dissertation at Georgia Southern University entitled, "W.E.B. Du Bois and Critical Race Theory: Toward a Du Boisian Philosophy of Education." In my study, I posit that Critical Race Theory represents an optimal theoretical framework for facilitating a greater understanding of Du Bois' educational perspectives. I consulted the work of Derrick Alridge, who has offered his own model for conceptualizing a Du Boisian educational model. Specifically, I took Alridge's 6 Du Boisian-based educational principles and reconciled them with the four themes of Critical Race Theory (1. Critique of Liberalism, 2. Interest Convergence, 3. Revisionist History, and 4. Structural Determinism). I would like to know what Dr. Levering Lewis thinks about the consistency between Du Bois' discourse in general and educational discourse in particular and Critical Race Theory.
David Levering Lewis:
I'm afraid that I'm rather dismayed by the complexity of Dr. Oatts' question and won't be able to give an answer that responds to its scope.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
I won't presume to answer a question over which Mr. Lewis taken a pass. But Prof. Oatts might find one of the papers in the new book from the University of Missouri Press, The Souls of Black Folk: One Hundred Years Later, to be of interest. It's a psychohistorical consideration of Du Bois's conflicts with other black leaders, and seems to have drawn on the same general kind of model cited in the question. Unfortunately the author's name doesn't come to mind, but Prof. Oatts might want to track down the book in any case.
Question from Jason B. Neuenschwander, Temple University:
As a first generation doctoral student in the field of Africana Studies, it continues to rankle me that so many in the academy continue to malign, molest, and miscontextualize Dr. DuBois' legacy of Pan-African leftist, internationalist thinking, writing, and activity, seeking to compartmentalize him within a specific temporal or spatial location (i.e. that nonsense that Playthell Benjamin and Stanley Crouch recently put out). My question is, what measures can those of us who are dedicated to maintaining the legacy of DuBois within and without the academy as a pioneer in the field of history/historiography and social activism do to both preserve DuBois's legacy?
David Levering Lewis:
The simple answer, I suppose, as this questioner and other sharing his concern about the pigeonholing and slicing and dicing of Du Bois's legacy, is to continue to object and imprecate and more to the point to produce first-rate scholarship that serves the purpose of contextualizing Du Bois, letting his voice express itself again, and quite astutely applying Du Boisian insights and pronouncements to current events, which will be importantly illuminated by them. I suppose what's in my mind as I work my way through the answer to this question is that I find that the writings of Du Bois in the Communist and fellow-traveler press during the 1950s, notwithstanding some Soviet apologetics, are enormeously pertinent as critiques of the excesses and manipulations of the immoral politics of the present regime in Washington -- especially his writings about peace and his deconstruction of the military, industrial, and communications complexes' manipulation of the body politic, by means of wedge politics of race and fraudulent patriotism.
Comment from Caroline Maun, Morgan State University:
I am teaching The Souls of Black Folk to an enthusiastic group of freshman English students this semester. They are formulating research papers and projects based on the book. What I am finding extremely valuable is the modeling of a thinker that Du Bois presents to them -- the catholicity of his imagination opens them to their own possibilities. I have a student, however, who insists that he "already knows" what is contained in Du Bois. What I suspect is that this is a painful text to confront, and that this may be a strategy for skirting the confrontations. I do, at all possible points, try to bring the issues up to date by explaining that the things Du Bois discusses are by no means resolved, and I give examples that are available. Any suggestions?
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
It seems as if Mr. Lewis has his hands full at the moment, so it might be best to treat Ms. Maun's question as one that readers might want to try to answer. Here are some other comments from people who have taught Souls.
Comment from Bill Evitts, State University of New York at Buffalo:
I have used Souls of Black Folk as a required book since I began teaching "American Pluralism" - a General Education course here at the University at Buffalo - three years ago.
Just this morning I asked my class about their reception of it. The results were that on the whole they found it engaging and valuable for historical understanding. The challenge to B. T. Washington in the third essay is especially instructive when paired with the text of Washington's Atlanta speech from eight years earlier.
With today's students, the more vivid descriptive, narrative sections are well received. A few even said they liked "best" the fictional Coming of John section, though I find it one of the least useful for teaching.
On the down side, all of these bright students said they hit stretches of Du Bois's late Victorian prose where the combination of his erudition, his writing style, and the long-departed nature of the issues at hand made the book slow going, indeed.
How are others faring with this in the classroom? How do you put the book in the context of a class?
Comment from Kirsten Buick, U. of New Mexico:
I have had experience of the appeal of "Double Consciousness" both in scholarly texts and with docents giving tours at museums--it was the section of Souls that was selected when putting together the slides and possible tours for a major museum in the midwest. My thought is that the idea is appealing because it is essentialism's last stand--inside the actual bodies of black folk. By editing the scope and richness of Du Bois in this way, the idea reifies and substantiates "Americanness."
Question from Jerry Persaud, Black Studies, SUNY New Paltz:
Dr. Lewis, What do you make of the veil? It is an integral part of Du Bois's narrative in various texts. One is tempted to do the Freud bit with it, but what is your historical understanding of it? Is it childhood? or both childhood and a long life in which he saw so much that is veiled? and so much of history as a veil?
David Levering Lewis:
I think the latter. The veil is one of those terms or metaphors that Du Bois employed that has caught the fancy of both the academic reader and the general public. It has, of course, Freudian significance as the reader suggests in terms of Du Bois's own formative experiences in the North. He poignantly describes the moment the racial veil fell as an elementary student in Great Barrington, Mass. So the veil has personal resonance. It has, though, also the utility that the cave in Plato had, and from which it is, in part, derived in positioning a group on the other side -- or outside-- of history: beknighted spectators of the human parade. So the veil is quite an effective and wrenching conceptualizing of the oppression and the marganilizing of a racial group.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
The questioner's reference to the overtones of Du Bois's image of the veil calls to mind another theme showing up throughout the book. There are quite a few places in the book where he refers to African-American life being a "riddle." And sometimes he also refers to the Sphinx where talking about that riddle. At first, that sounds vaguely Afrocentric, pointing to ancient Egypt. Maybe it is. But it's also a classical reference, one his readers would have picked up -- since it was Oedipus who answered the Sphinx's riddle. That's not necessarily got a thing to do with Freud. One of the things Oedipus is faced with is answering the question of his own identity, which is very much to Du Bois's point. Anyway, that's an example of the kind of thing you can miss on first reading Souls, then find jumping off the page later, upon returning. It's a sign of just how intricate a book this is.
Question from Eric Dodson, onShore Development:
I understand that Du Bois did not care for Marcus Garvey, did that extend to the end of his life? Also, did he have any relationship with Booker T. Washington?
David Levering Lewis:
Du Bois did not particularly like Marcus Garvey, either as a person or as a leader. But, later he was rather more forgiving; that is, he placed Garvey and his limitations in context. Of course the other part of the question is the basis of many monographs, which the questioner must certainly know.
Question from Larry L. Rowley, University of Michigan:
I would like to know if Professor Lewis listened to the Supreme Court oral arguments yesterday on Michigan's affirmative action policies in admissions. If so, how does he think the arguments concerning diversity as a compelling interest will fare in light of Du Bois's scathing reminders of America's many failures to live up to many of its democratic ideals including opportunity and access to a quality higher education?
David Levering Lewis:
I did not hear the audio of the oral arguments. I think to speak for Du Bois about events that are posterior to his life is inherently fraudulent and a great conceit on the part of a biographer, but I feel pretty confident that the optimizing of access to education would be of primordial value for Du Bois. Now it's true, I suppose, that some people on the other side of this issue of affirmative access will say that Du Bois would be an opponent of it, because he was such a meritocrat himself and certainly would not have needed special points to go to university. But I think that would say no more really than that Du Bois, like Lewis, would insist that in opening the window of opportunity to groups that have been long disadvantaged and, to some degree, still remain so, the only requirement is that standards be maintained, and that one not indulge the narcissism of small differences. I believe it to be true that the correspondence between SAT scores and other such tests and success later in life is not at all great, on the one hand; and it's certainly true, on the other hand, that all institutions make it possible for the wealthy and the influencially connected to gain admission. And so, the issue before the Court and the larger issue of affirmative action is hardly one of standard or discrimination in reverse, but plainly, throughly, and simply the wedge politcs always available in the arsenal of those who oppose a truly democratic society.
Question from Jerry Persuad, SUNY New Paltz:
What was Du Bois' relation with C.L.R. James and G. Padmore..in other words, the West Indians of the early post-Souls period?
David Levering Lewis:
C.L.R. James has rendered a verdict on Du Bois's significance. He says that Du Bois was the greatest intellectual of the 20th century. The source of that is C.L.R. James speaking to David Levering Lewis several years ago, which I have on tape. There is almost no correspondence between the two, however, and rather surprisingly. But I do know that Du Bois greatly admired James's magnum opus: The Black Jacobins. Du Bois's relations with George Padmore were a little tense at times, because Padmore ran with Du Bois's pan-African idea without, Du Bois felt,expressing the proper deference to its originator. For example, the turning point Pan-African Congress in Manchester England in 1945 was assembled by Padmore with Du Bois as an add-on, and though Du Bois participated very significantly, it was Padmore's success in assembling that Congress that was widely appreciated. And so an old man, who had given so much to Africa, was being upstaged, as is the way of the world by a brilliant young man -- but not altogether upstaged.
Question from Scott McLemee:
I'd like to ask Mr. Lewis to comment, in closing, on what is sometimes called Du Bois's elitism. Or rather, perhaps, on how that description is sometimes used in what might be called an authenticity contest among some academics. There is an essay by Cornel West in which Mr. West says that Du Bois had no contact with, or feel for, the lives of ordinary black working people. Unlike, I guess, the insight gained from steady communion with the workers and peasants of Cambridge and Princeton? At any rate, It is hard to square that statement with the essay in Souls called "On the Meaning of Progress," where Du Bois recounts his experience as a public-school teacher in rural Tennessee, among people who were struggling just to get their kids a few months in the classroom. Isn't there something actually kind of egalitarian about Du Bois's idea of the Talented Tenth? And maybe a little too self-exculpating, at times, about contemporary academic egalitarianism?
David Levering Lewis:
That's a wonderful question, and I think I simply would do well to assent before I do any elaborating, because I agree with the implications of it. And I think Scott McLemee used the term "egalitarian ideas" to distinguish between egalitarian ideas of Du Bois and the Du Bois of handlebar mustaches, gold-tipped Benson and Hedges cigarettes, lover of German lieder, and fine wines is necessary. It is true that Du Bois in his person was very much an Edwardian gentleman. What I think Professor West has failed to focus on, however, is the very un-Edwardian ideas that Du Bois expressed in his many writings. The sociological insights of Du Bois at the turn of the 20th century -- as he roamed the Deep South, observing the appalling conditions of informal slavery still obtaining and the brutality visited upon people of color as a means of social control-- amount to the most penetrating and path-breaking appreciations of the conditions of ordinary black people of the time. I suppose one doesn't have to drink beer and eat chitterlings with people in order be able to empathize with their socioeconomic conditions and more significantly propose solutions to those conditions. And in those ways, it seems to me, Du Bois's elitism is a quality we could well see more of exhibited by public intellectuals.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
We can't take any more questions, now, and it looks as if a few that came in may have to go without comment by Mr. Lewis, who has certainly been very generous with his time and knowledge throughout this colloquy.
David Levering Lewis:
It was a fine opportunity to be taken back over the road that I traveled with Du Bois and others in Du Bois's world. The questions were very probing and what they reflect, most of them, to my delight is the contemporaneity of this wonderful gentleman who lived almost a hundred years, straight across two centuries, from Reconstruction to exit of the eve of the march on Washington, and whose controversial and zany and brilliant ideas will, I think, detain serious people for many decades to come. It may be a little trite to presume to revise one of Du Bois's most famous taglines, but as we all know, he prophesized that the problem of the 20th century would be the problem of the color line. It's very clear, as you reread Du Bois's evolving writings, that if he were with us now, he would amend that prophesy -- that the problem of the 21st century is the cash-line. Finally, economics trumps race in this long contest for making the world a better place.
Scott McLemee (Moderator):
Thanks again, Mr. Lewis. I'd also like to express appreciation to Karolina Augustynowicz and Sarah Reese for their indispensible role in transcribing Mr. Lewis's answers to readers' questions.
Copyright © 2008 by The Chronicle of Higher Education