W.E.B. Du Bois in the Tradition of Radical Blackness: Radicalism, Repression, and Mutual Comradeship, 1930–1960

Come Correct: Itineraries of Discovery in Black Women's Ethnographic Practice

“…Critical Black studies scholar Charisse Burden‐Stelly (2018) theorizes “mutual comradeship,” in her writing on the reciprocal political relationship of W. E. B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois, as an “ethical practice rooted in the tradition of radical blackness” and a “method” of “accountability to each other and the broader struggle” (202‐6).…”

“…In this methodological reflection, we explore “co‐performative witnessing” (Madison 2007) and “mutual comradeship” (Burden‐Stelly 2018) as counter‐modalities of ethnographic praxis, which follow in the path of Black women ethnographers disrupting and rerouting the disciplinarily legitimized stakes of ethnography. We renarrate gatherings , by which we mean moments of being gathered, or collected and corrected in love, within our respective itineraries of discovery in Liberia and Nigeria.…”

Connecting the Threads: Stratification Economics and the Political Economy of W.E.B. Du Bois

“…This interpretation of Black Reconstruction is at odds with Robinson's (1983) characterization of the volume as an exemplar of what he terms the “The Black Radical Tradition.” This Black Radical tradition, according to Robinson, “casts doubt on the extent to which capitalism penetrated and re-formed social life and on its ability to create entirely new categories of human experience stripped bare of the historical consciousness embedded in culture” (Robinson, 1983; 170). Burden-Stelly (2018, p. 190) shares aspects of Allen's critique of Robinson's viewpoint, insisting that Black Reconstruction it is a contribution to the “tradition of radical blackness” that “centers critical political economy analysis, attends to intra-racial class conflict and antagonism, theorizes the international character of blackness as a special condition of surplus value extraction, and strives for the eventual overthrow of capitalism.”…”

“…These interventions suggest an affirmative answer to the query posed by Allen (2020) regarding whether it is possible for Marxist analysis to accommodate the phenomenon of culture conflict in a credible manner while maintaining its primary focus on capitalist accumulation. From this vantage point it is indeed possible to read Du Bois's Black Reconstruction as both a contribution to the “Black Radical Tradition” and the “Tradition of Radical Blackness” (Burden-Stelly, 2018; Robinson, 1983).…”

“…While Du Bois was being challenged regarding his changing perspectives on Socialism and universal democracy he continued to face assaults from what Burden-Stelly (2018, p. 206) describes as ”Cold War counterrevolutionary forces attempt[ing] to defame, undercut, erase, and criminalize” him. Horne (1986, p. 353) recounts, “Du Bois’ Communist Party connections kept a bevy of government agents on the payroll justifying their salaries by filing reams of memos about him; his egging on independent Africa to socialism created concern in Washington and on Wall Street.…”