Reclaiming a Du Boisian Perspective on Racial Attitudes

Abstract

This article asserts that Du Boisian sociology included a strong role for racial prejudice in analyzing the conditions and dynamics of African American social life. The article examines Du Bois's empirical social scientific legacy with a special focus on The Philadelphia Negro and how he treated racial prejudice in this seminal work. It then examines the turn away from a concern with racial prejudice in modern sociological analysis and identifies the necessity of returning to the theoretical holism exemplified by Du Bois if sociological theory on race and racism are to advance. is most widely known as an essayist, biographer, social commentator, and activist. His life's project involved an interrogation of the problem of race and the pursuit of freedom for African Americans (indeed the pursuit of freedom for all those trapped on the wrong side of the color line in a colonial, imperialistic, and capitalistic world order). In what is surely his most oft quoted passage, Du Bois declared, The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line-the relation of the darker to the lighter races of men in Asia and Africa, in America and the islands of the sea. (Du Bois [1903] 1997, 45) Deep and timeless social insights of this kind, including his discussion of double-consciousness, life behind the veil, and his broad visionary humanism constitute the universally recognized aspects of Du Bois's legacy. Yet, for much ofDu Bois's long and productive life he was an empirical social scientist. He pioneered in the conduct of comprehensive community social surveys, in the documentation of black community life, and in the theoretically grounded analysis of black-white relations. Were it not for the deeply entrenched racism in the United States during his early professional years, Du Bois would be recognized alongside the likes of as one of the fountainheads of American sociology. Had not racism so thoroughly excluded him from placement in the center of the academy, he might arguably have come to rank with Max Weber or Emile Durkheim in stature.1 Today, urban anthropologists, historical economists, political scientists, social psychologists, and sociologists all attempt to claim a piece of the Du Boisian legacy (Bay 1998).My purpose here is to add to the growing stream of scholarship reclaiming and building upon the contributions of W.E.B. Du Bois the empirical social scientist. At core, I argue that Du Bois's sociological analysis of the status of African Americans reflected a foundational concern with prejudice and racial attitudes. It is essential to reconsider and resuscitate this aspect of Du Boisian sociology. Modern sociologists have abandoned, more often implicitly but sometimes quite explicitly so, a perspective on racial inequality that embraces a role for racial identities, attitudes, and beliefs. The result has been energy misspent in well-worn race versus class polemics and a failure to understand the social underpinnings of a changing but durable racial divide.My argument begins with a consideration ofD...

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