W.E.B. Du Bois

Embryonic intersectionality: W.E.B. Du Bois and the inauguration of intersectional sociology

“….and the moral and economic revolution of emancipation in a county where the slave property was worth at least $2,500,000” (p. 4). However, his early work here does not engage the pitfalls of pandering to the Eurocentrism and elitism of White middle-class culture and Victorian values; that kind of critique, which Du Bois did eventually develop, would be registered later, a lot later by many accounts (Gaines, 1996: 152–178; Lewis, 1993: 201–210: Marable, 1986: 25–51; Rabaka, 2021: 121–156).…”

“…None of the aforementioned professors dared to do what Du Bois did: which is to say, he inaugurated a tradition or “school” of empirical social scientific research primarily preoccupied with the most pressing problems confronting the citizens of the United States of America (Bay, 1998; Du Bois, 1978; Morris, 2015; Schrager, 1996; Wright, 2016; Zuberi, 1998, 2004). What is even more impressive is the wide-range and wide-reach of Du Bois’s contributions to sociology, which, includes undeniable offerings to urban sociology, rural sociology, sociology of race, sociology of class, sociology of culture, sociology of religion, sociology of education, sociology of crime, sociology of family, and seminal male-feminist contributions to sociology of gender and intersectional sociology (Balfour, 2011; Gillman and Weinbaum, 2007; Green and Wortham 2015, 2018; Hancock, 2005; Hattery and Smith, 2005; Lemons, 2009; Lucal, 1996; Rabaka, 2008, 2010, 2013, 2017, 2021; Zerai, 2000). Let us now turn our attention to Du Bois’s contributions to the sociology of race, gender, and class, where we can clearly see his “embryonic intersectionality.” Meaning, an inchoate, not fully formed variant of intersectionality that, because of its prefigurative nature, is at times conceptually connected, and at other times is intellectually awkward and discursively disjointed .…”

Alternative View of Modernity: The Subaltern Speaks

“…Du Bois’s analysis of class, race, and gender anticipated intersectionality, whiteness studies, and critical race theory (Gilkes 1996; Morris 2015; Rabaka 2021). Du Bois emphasized that racism divided the Black and white working classes.…”

“…Du Bois’s internationalist perspective shed light on why African Americans rejected Africans, because he centered global white domination and Black demonization (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020; Morris 2007, 2015; Rabaka 2021). The same racist ideology prevalent in Mississippi cottonfields justified exploitation of Africans: “[T]he theory of the innate and eternal inferiority of black folk was invented and diffused” (Du Bois 1975:128).…”

Against Imperial Social Policy: Recasting Mkandawire’s Transformative Ideas for Africa’s Liberation

“…Third, I locate Mkandawire as a prophetic theoretician of social policy towards African liberation and structural transformation and tease out his global vision of a post-imperial global order. This paper is located within growing realizations and agitations for ‘Africa as a Thinking Space’ (see Chan, 2021; Getachew, 2019a; Nyoka, 2020; Rabaka, 2010, 2020, 2021) by reifying contributions of Black theoreticians who have shaped the African continent and diaspora’s social and political thought historically subverted by epistemic racism.…”