Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois at the Paris Exposition in 1900.
Liberation Sociology
Commentary by Chitown Kev
The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology
by Aldon D. Morris
University of California Press, 281pp., $29.95
One of the benefits of my personal studies of what is sometimes referred to as "black nationalism" was the opportunity to read and study the essential texts of my people on my own, "Fubu-style," without the mediation of any college professor or even a book group. I've always been the sort of reader that enjoys digging into footnotes and subtexts and following those clues into the library reading various sources. Ta-Nehisi Coates captures the sheer wonder of Fubu-style education in Between the World and Me and I have no words to add to Mr. Coates' description in that book.
No Fubu-style education is complete without reading some of the works of Dr. William Edward Burghardt "W. E. B." Du Bois. The Souls of Black Folk, of course, is now part of the canon of American literature (not just the black part!). I also read various essays of Dr. Du Bois, marveling at this black genius who studied in Germany in the heyday of German scholarship and who was the first African-American to receive a doctorate from Harvard. I also thought that Dr. Du Bois was a bit of a prude and a Victorian (in other words, a man of his age) for some of his criticisms of Harlem Renaissance writers, even as he helped to promote the black (gay) movement through his editorship of the NAACP magazine, The Crisis.
I would never think that the idea that Dr. Du Bois was one of the American founders of the discipline of sociology (as we have come to know it) is even a controversial claim; simply a skimming of Dr. Du Bois' study of the black community in Philadelphia, The Philadelphia Negro, and a little background reading into the fact that Dr. Du Bois' use of graphs and charts was something rarely seen in a book of its type at that time (and one has to take into account that there were no "schools" or even much undergraduate study what we now call "sociology") would disabuse anyone from that notion. Yet Dr. Aldon Morris, Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University, persuasively argues in his new book, The Scholar Denied: W.E.B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology, that the recognition of Dr. Du Bois as a pioneer of American sociology has only occurred in the last twenty years due to "an explosion" of "Du Boisian scholarship" and that throughout his lifetime, Dr. Du Bois' achievements as a pioneer American sociologist and as a founder of the first "school" of American sociology were, on one hand, rendered nearly invisible by racism within the American intellectual community while, on the other hand, these very same schools of sociology (primarily the "Chicago School" of Sociology), at times, used the insights of what Morris calls the Du Bois-Atlanta School of Sociology with little or no attribution.
Detailed charts such as this chart from Chapter 15 of "The Philadelphia Negro" were virtually without precedent in sociological studies of the late 19th century.
Morris attributes much of the marginalization of Dr. Du Bois early 20th century achievements to the
Du Bois-Booker T. Washington conflict and the differing views of the two black leaders. Washington, at that time, through the influence of Tuskegee Institute, his support of industrial education for blacks, and his refusal to challenge Southern Jim Crow became the patron of white industrialists and financiers. The price of that ticket (if I may use that Baldwinian phrase) was that Jim Crow was to remain unchallenged and that white superiority (and the myth of black inferiority) would be maintained. Over the years, I've taken a somewhat softer and more understanding point of view toward Washington's willingness to accommodate white supremacy but the numerous and detailed quotations of Washington's own words in
The Scholar Denied cannot help but to remind me, at times, of these jacked-up prosperity gospel preachers of today.
Robert E. Park
It is Dr. Du Bois' refusal to accept Washington's offer of a post at Tuskegee in 1905 that sets the stage for his marginalization. Washington, instead, hired
Robert E. Park, a man described by Dr. Morris as having "few professional accomplishments" (and certainly nothing anywhere nearing the accomplishments of Du Bois) Park's position at Tuskegee enabled him to "closely observe Negroes and southern race relations," to have "access to southern black communities unavailable to other white scholars," and, ultimately, to help Washington and his white financiers marginalize Dr. Du Bois. After a decade at Tuskegee, Park is hired at The University of Chicago. It was through the financial resources of the University of Chicago that Park was able to promote a sociology of "social Darwinism" supported by the underpinnings of white supremacy. Systematically, Dr. Du Bois and his students at the Atlanta School are starved of funding, shut out of conferences and publications and periodicals of the period, and are shut out of intellectual networks that Dr. Morris sees as necessary (then and now) for survival in academia.
The Scholar Denied is at it's most effective with its discussion of what Dr. Morris calls the "liberation capital" of the Du Bois-Atlanta School.
Liberation capital was the basic form of currency that made it possible for the Du Bois-Atlanta school to become a formidable intellectual force. At the turn of the twentieth century, some black leaders and intellectuals were desperately searching for ways to stop and reverse the entrenchment of Jim Crow in the South...Blacks streamed to sociology because they sought an understanding of racism and how it could be dismantled. Their hopes primed them to contribute liberation capital to build a scientific enterprise combating oppression. pp. 188-89
This "liberation capital" is contrasted with the myth of objectivity at other (and later) "schools" of sociology (i.e. Chicago, Columbia University). Beneath the "objective" and detached veneer of these schools, philosophies and methodologies steeped in social Darwinism and assumptions of white supremacy and black inferiority abounded. Under these conditions, Dr. Du Bois could hardly be viewed as doing "objective" and empirically based research simply because he was a black man. Due to what I have called "the categorical imperative" of white supremacy in all areas of American life and letters, Dr. Du Bois was not even able to receive adequate funding for his for dream-project, a projected multi-volume
Encyclopedia of the Negro; the Carnegie Foundation, instead, chose to fund and support Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal and his eventual 1944 tome,
An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.
The cast of characters in this fine book include Franz Boas, Jane Addams (I never knew anything about The Settlement Movement), Mary White Ovington (also a founder of the NAACP) and an entire chapter devoted to Dr. Du Bois' relationship with German sociologist Max Weber. Dr. Morris' The Scholar Denied is a raucous and, at times, sobering and maddening romp through a segment of intellectual life of the early 20th century that, even to the modern ears of The Diaspora, frequently sounds all too familiar.
Text amended and completed at 6:41pm 10/6/15
Primary Sources that you may be interested in:
The Black North: A Social Study By W. E. BURGHARDT DUBOIS published November 17, 1901 in The New York Times
The Laboratory in Sociology at Atlanta University by W. E. Burghardt DuBois (1903)
Here's a really good secondary source:
Introduction to the Sociology of W.E.B. Dubois by Robert A. Wortham North Carolina Central University
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News by dopper0189, Black Kos Managing Editor
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The fact that Republicans have a party littered with racist, doesn't mean Democrats have no issues on racism. The New Republic: The Democratic Party Isn’t as Racist as the GOP. That’s Not Saying Much.
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A sampling from the frontrunners for the 2016 presidential election: There’s the GOP’s widespread Islamophobia, cemented by Ben Carson’s wish to exclude Muslims outright from the body politic; the stewing anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic language served up by Donald Trump, who’s currently polling the highest in the field; and the anachronistic assault on black voters coupled with a disbelief in the reality of black lives might be something they all agree on. Many commentators have construed Republican’s race problems as a crucial part of the party’s new identity. They’re right.
A more difficult question to answer, and to ask, however, is whether Democrats are doing enough in return to be a voice of anti-racism. Evidence from Thomas Edsall’s recent New York Times op-ed on the racial under-and-overtones of the Republican Party shakes some closely held Democratic convictions on race. Edsall cites a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute on whether white respondents in 2014 agreed or disagreed with the statement “Today discrimination against whites has become as big a problem as discrimination against blacks and other minorities.” He intends to isolate the delusions of the right. That’s not hard, where 76 percent of Tea Partiers and 61 percent of Republicans self-identify as deluded—which is to say, they agreed. And yet: a full 37 percent of white Democrats think that white people face the same discrimination as the populations that are disproportionately arrested, sentenced, in poverty, unemployed, and killed.
It’s not just white Democrats, though. On a number of racial issues, more than one third of all Democrats appear to hold beliefs that better fit the old southern Democrats than the supposedly modern progressives smug at the Republican Party’s descent into racial dog-whistling. A sampling of these views: bias against Islam, where 67 percent of Republicans say that Islam is “more likely to encourage violence among its believers; 42 percent of Democrats agree. On immigrants: Where about two thirds of Republicans say that immigrants “burden” rather than “strengthen” the country, a full third of Democrats feel the same way.
Granted, that more than a third of Democrats concur with Republicans on a number of racist, xenophobic, or nativist poll questions is not quite equivalent to the bile spewing from the other side of the aisle. That type of bile makes a physical wall seem like an appropriate response to human aspiration and suffering and survival; it says time is well spent protecting Americans from “Sharia law.”
That said: This kind of widespread delusion should be extremely troubling for a party that positions itself as the progressive one. Even if it isn’t strictly pulling the country backwards, 37 percent is an awfully big weight to pull forward—a third of the party doesn’t see a need for change where there clearly is one.
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The new measures signed by Gov. Jerry Brown require law enforcement agencies to collect demographic data on police stops. LA Times: Calif. Gov. Signs Bills to Curb Racial Profiling.
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Gov. Jerry Brown on Saturday signed bills aimed at reducing racial profiling and the use of excessive force by law enforcement officers, problems that have been elevated into a national debate by recent incidents across the country.
One of the bills, AB 953, requires police officers to collect data on the people they stop, including perceived race and ethnicity, the reason for the encounter and the outcome.
In addition, the governor signed a requirement that law enforcement agencies provide annual reports with details on all cases in which officers are involved in uses of force that result in serious injury or death.
Those and others bills signed by the governor will "strengthen criminal justice in California," according to a statement by the governor's office.
The state attorney general’s office will determine how the reporting will be done and how the data will be stored, under AB 619.
Assemblywoman Shirley N. Weber (D-San Diego) introduced the bills in response to “the deaths of unarmed black men and other people of color by police,” which she said “have forced us to confront some ugly truths about the persistence of racial bias in law enforcement.”
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The backlash Alabama is now facing reflects the state’s long history of blocking African American access to the polls, from 1965’s Selma protests to the 2013 Supreme Court decision in the Shelby County case that gutted a key provision of the Voting Rights Act. Talking Point Memo: Why The Alabama DMV Closures Struck Such A Nerve With Voting Rights Activists.
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The state of Alabama has been accused of bringing back Jim Crow for closing 31 driver’s licenses offices in the state -- including all the offices in counties where African Americans make up more than 75 percent of the registered voters -- which critics say will further disenfranchise minority voters in a state that requires government-issued photo IDs at the ballot box.
The backlash Alabama is now facing reflects the state’s long history of blocking African American access to the polls, from 1965’s Selma protests that ushered in the Voting Rights Act in the first place to the 2013 Supreme Court decision in the Shelby County case that gutted a key provision of it.
The latest episode involves Alabama’s widely criticized voter ID law colliding with a broke government that can’t fund basic services. State officials are now on the defensive, denying that the closures -- many of them in counties in what is known as Alabama’s “Black Belt” -- will make it harder for African Americans to vote.
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A cellphone app that records police stops is the people’s “body camera.” The Root: Get Stopped by the Police? There’s an App for That.
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Almost a year ago, Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old boy, was shot and killed by Cleveland police officers within two seconds of the officers arriving on the scene; in April of this year, Freddie Gray died from an injury suffered while in police custody in Baltimore; in the same month, Walter L. Scott was shot in the back eight times while fleeing a police officer during a traffic stop in South Carolina. Video footage of Tamir’s, Gray’s and Scott’s interactions with police led to terminations or criminal charges, outrage, protests and discussions focused on police violence and race.
“We should know how police are doing their jobs, because we give them tremendous power, we give them power no other government official has—to stop somebody, to arrest somebody and even to kill,” Hector Villagra, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, told The Root. “If we think they are not doing it in accordance with our values, then we have to demand that it change.”
One thing that could help push that change is the act of recording these interactions between citizens and police.
This year the ACLU of California, the joint branch of the ACLU of Southern California and the two other ACLU affiliates in the state, launched an app to make it safe and easy for citizens to exercise their right to record police interactions. The free app, Mobile Justice CA, allows Android and iPhone users to record and automatically send video of police encounters to ACLU servers, preserving the footage even if officers try to destroy the phone or delete the video. A copy of the video is also saved to the user’s camera roll.
Villagra revealed that the goal was to get 100,000 downloads in a year, a goal the group exceeded in five months with over 160,000 downloads. Five additional ACLU offices—Missouri, Mississippi, Nebraska, New York and Oregon—have launched the app. Comments in the Google Play and Apple stores indicate that users want to know when the app will be available in their state.
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The 37-year-old robotics engineer owes his career success to mentors, and now he’s paying it forward by giving support to the next generation. The Root: Terrence Southern Wants to Fill the World With Black Scientists.
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What will it take for African Americans to close the achievement gap in science, technology, engineering and math? It’s a complex issue that experts say involves, among other factors, the public education system, poverty and teachers’ unconscious racial bias.
So far, the solutions have been elusive. But there’s a consensus that mentorship is a key.
Terrence Southern, 37, knows the challenges that lie ahead for the next generation regarding STEM. He’s a robotics engineer with 15 years in the tech industry who grew up in Detroit, where his dreams were nurtured by an eighth-grade teacher. He wants to be that kind of support for as many young people as possible.
He works currently for GE Transportation as a robotics and automation engineer. But the wealth of his experience came at General Motors in his hometown. In his first position at GM at age 23, he led a robotics team tasked with conducting multimillion-dollar projects. A mentor, who’s now a close friend, guided him around the land mines he encountered.
Terrence Southern
COURTESY TERRENCE SOUTHERN
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Voices and Soul
by Justice Putnam
Black Kos Poetry Editor
She is a specter, a ghostly presence that we can ignore until we can't. She is pushing a ragged shopping cart, she is stumbling with a cane, she is walking in the slow elegance of the elderly matron; yet we don't see her, even though we move out of her way.
She lives next door, down the street, across the river and under a freeway overpass. She is our mother, sister, cousin, aunt and grandmother.
She might have been great once; but we don't see her, we don't hear her. We ignore her.
Until we can't.
She
When she sits at the kitchen table
while she talks her hands seem to balance
in the air faithful at the level of
her words; she is careful what she says.
The morning sun through the window strikes
her skin, shows how the faint lines in her
palms will come to deepen like corduroy
cloth to fit the weather of her age.
Still a young woman, she has to work
the graveyard shift, sleeps what is left
then wakes to get the kids to school.
It must be morning when she dreams.
Peering into her coffee’s surface
she looks back from its depth, her hands
caught holding an implement, a fossil of
her life: Alabama born, feelings
huddled north, these steel cities this cold month,
her dark soul twisting into fingers
whose motion at this brown angle
is the slow fall flight of leaves through time.
And she rises with the gesture, and
the oil in her hands is necessity’s
sweat: each hand on the tabletop
a work cloth rubbing the other fine
wooden one.
-- Christopher Gilbert
"She"
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