“Not Equals but Men”: Du Bois on Social Equality and Self-Conscious Manhood

Abstract

While recent scholarship has argued for the utility of W. E. B. Du Bois's thought for democratic theory, his career-long emphasis on the problem of social equality-and the solution of self-conscious manhood-has gone largely unnoticed. In this article, I argue that while Du Bois's emphasis on social equality powerfully situates racial oppression as a social and epistemic problem, his solution of self-conscious manhood paradoxically reproduces the very conditions of social inequality he seeks to combat. Open to people of all races, genders, and classes, the path of self-conscious manhood consists in radical truth-telling, a free anarchy of the spirit, a will to strive and act, and the purity of isolation. However, through a close reading of Du Bois's biographies, editorials, and fiction, I show that self-conscious manhood centers an exclusionary and atomized ethic of self-creation rather than producing a democratic political and social order.

“This Unfortunate Development”: Incarceration and Democracy in W. E. B. Du Bois

“…Nick Bromell (2018) has called this rhetorical move “democratic reasoning,” and it provides additional evidence for reading Du Bois as a democrat. For an insightful reading of the complexities of Du Bois’s democratic theory, see Emma Rodman (2021).…”