Source of book:
I own this.
It has been
quite a few years since I read Du Bois’ most famous work, The
Souls of Black Folk, which was definitely influential on my
thinking.
This book, like
the other, is a Black History Month selection. You can find the
entire list here, and my
thoughts on Black History Month here.
Dusk of Dawn
is an interesting book in that it combines autobiography - it tells the story
of Du Bois’ life up until the period immediately before World War Two - with
philosophy - his evolving ideas about race and racism in America.
For a book 85
years old, it feels shockingly relevant. We are still dealing with the same
issues, the same arguments, the same everything. And I will be clear here: MAGA
is the “same old serpent,” as Lincoln put it. It is nothing less than White
Supremacy, the new KKK, and Nazism come to life again.
It literally
feels like everything in Dusk of Dawn was written today. I am not
kidding about that. This is both affirming and discouraging. It is good to read
someone who saw it all as clearly as Du Bois did. It is a reminder that the
fight is nothing new. Indeed, the economic issues which lead to the Great
Depression have re-emerged, and demand a more thorough solution this time
around. (Including the full confiscation of the plunder perpetrated by the
predator-billionaire class of the working classes, and the prosecution of the
plunderers.)
In so many
ways, W. E. B. du Bois is the black writer I identify with most in a personal
way. We have a lot in common.
Both of us grew
up in working-to-lower-middle-class families who valued our education. Both of
us surpassed most of our peers academically through hard work, family support,
and innate intelligence. Both of us believe in the value of education and
knowledge in changing the world. Both of us were initially naive, thinking that
racism was mostly a lack of education or a few bad actors, rather than an
entire social system of exploitation - aka “CRT,” even if it wasn’t called that
back then.
Even in terms
of personality, I think there are similarities. We are both introverts, who
think better when writing than when giving speeches, who prefer educating to
leading. I also find his command of the semicolon to warm my heart.
While I greatly
admire so many of the various civil rights advocates, and love reading them, I
think W. E. B. du Bois is the one that I would most want to invite to dinner. I
feel we would naturally get along and have a lot in common. Oh, and we would both
enjoy discussing the ideas of William
James, who is mentioned often in this book.
I wrote down a
whole bunch of quotes, but it would be impossible to capture the true essence
of the book, particularly Du Bois’ theories of economics and race that evolve
slowly throughout his story of his life. It’s worth reading, particularly for
understanding our times and the national sin of white supremacy which is
currently destroying our country.
The
introduction really lays out the issue, then and now.
My life had its significance and its
only deep significance because it was part of a Problem; but that problem was,
as I continue to think, the central problem of the greatest of the world’s
democracies and so the Problem of the future world. The problem of the future
world is the charting, by means of intelligent reason, of a path not simply
through the resistances of physical force, but through the vaster and far more
intricate jungle of ideas condition on unconscious and subconscious reflexes of
living things; on blind unreason and often irresistible urges of sensitive
matter; of which the concept of race is today one of the most unyielding and
threatening.
Unlike today’s
right wing, which has embraced an Ayn Rand idea of radical individuality, and
thus missing the interconnections which underlie society and the economy and
make wealth possible, Du Bois understood the connections. I found this line
perceptive.
In the folds of this European civilization
I was born and shall die, imprisoned, conditioned, depressed, exalted and
inspired. Integrally a part of it and yet, much more significant, one of its
rejected parts; one who expressed in life and action and made vocal to many, a
single whirlpool of social entanglement and inner psychological paradox, which
always seem to me more significant for the meaning of the world today than
other similar and related problems.
He goes on to
note that even through the rise of the scientific method, and the discovery
that race is a social fiction, racism continued to be a root facet of
society.
But the mind clung desperately to the
idea that basic racial differences between human beings had suffered no change;
and it clung to this idea not simply from inertia and unconscious action but
from the fact that because of the modern African slave trade a tremendous
economic structure and eventually an industrial revolution had been based upon
racial differences between men; and this racial difference had now been
rationalized into a difference mainly of skin color.
After a basic
introduction to these ideas, he continues with his boyhood as a free black in
New England. I was surprised to find that he and his family were about the same
kind of lower-middle-class conservatives me and mine were. I swear I was
literally taught this next line as gospel truth. And, I suppose it was at least
somewhat true for my dad - a white male Boomer, aka, the most privileged form
of human in American history.
My general attitude toward property and
income was that all who were willing to work could easily earn a living; that
those who had property had earned it and deserved it and could use it as they
wished; that poverty was the shadow of crime and connoted lack of thrift and
shiftlessness. These were the current patterns of thought of the town in my
boyhood.
That this has
ceased to be true for my children was, unfortunately, apparent years ago. And
it was never true for black children. Not really. Which is Du Bois’ point, and
his success and the success of the Talented Tenth didn’t
change the reality for the greater masses.
Next up is
another line that sure seems relevant. With this book being published during
the last surge of fascism, some things seem very familiar.
Today both youth and age look upon a
world whose foundations seem to be tottering. They are not sure what the morrow
will bring; perhaps the complete overthrow of European civilization, of that
great enveloping mass of culture into which they were born. Everything in their
environment is a meet subject for criticism. They can dispassionately evaluate
the past and speculate upon the future. It is a day of fundamental
change.
Du Bois
contrasts this with his own younger years, when things seemed more fixed, and
progress more sure. Another thing that I feel we have in common. Oh, and here
is another one. Du Bois had a complicated relationship with religion. He was,
as most Americans of the time were, raised Protestant Christian. He later
deconverted, mostly following the Baha’i Faith with some Hindu influences.
However, he continued to write and use prayers that would be at home in most
Protestant churches. Although presumably not as much these days, as white
Evangelicalism has been co-opted by a supremacist political movement, and has
no further use for Christ.
Anyway, Du Bois
recounts how he had his first real challenge to his faith - something that
happened to me as well.
But the book on “Christian Evidences”
which we were compelled to read, affronted my logic. It was to my mind, then
and since, a cheap piece of special pleading.
While the most
damaging challenge to my faith is and remains the embrace of Trump by
Evangelicalism and bigotry and hate by my parents, the second most challenging
discovery was that apologetics is just utter and pure shite. “Special Pleading” is
a generous way of putting it. Nothing made me question specific claims more
than seeing how flimsy the defense was. If that is all ya got? In contrast,
other college studies resonated more with him in the same way they did for
me.
Our course in general philosophy under
the serious and entirely loveable president was different. It opened vistas. It
made me determine to go further in this probing for truth. Eventually it landed
me squarely in the arms of William James of Harvard, for which God be
praised.
I too wish to
seek truth. To have my vistas opened, not narrowed. And William James is
perhaps the closest writer to my own philosophy.
Of course, Du
Bois got to take classes from James personally, which makes me jealous. The
list he gives of luminaries at Harvard of that era too, wow. Santayana, Palmer,
Shaler, and so many more. Du Bois got an education worthy of envy, and he
really made the most of it.
He also
continued to learn throughout life. His years as a teacher are filled with his
continuing growth in thought. Here is another line that I think matches my own
journey.
I was interested in evolution, geology,
and the new psychology. I began to conceive of the world as a continuing growth
rather than a finished product.
Along with this
knowledge, he came to understand the new imperialism of America, starting with
our overthrow
of the Hawaiian government.
At this time,
he also started to disagree with the established black leaders, primarily
Booker T. Washington. This feud is well known, although it is to my mind a bit
overblown. They both respected each other - this was no rapper feud but a
disagreement about means, not ends.
Succinctly put,
Washington thought that black folk would advance through working in the trades
and accumulating property. Du Bois thought that black folk needed education
first, or they would always be led by - and exploited by - whites.
Later in the
book, he talks about his parting of ways with the NAACP, for similar reasons.
Du Bois increasingly saw racism in terms of economic exploitation, and
advocated for the elimination of the economic system that oppressed black and
white. In this, he foresaw both the effects of the Depression, and our current
oligarchy. More on that later. But even in this early disagreement, he
correctly noted that the white oligarchy would always prevent the working
class, and particularly the black working class, from earning enough to
accumulate wealth.
Oh, and Du Bois
also took issue with Washington’s tendency to victim-blame.
I was increasingly uncomfortable under
the statements of Mr. Washington’s position: his depreciation of the value of
the vote; his evident dislike of Negro colleges; and his general attitude which
seemed to place the onus of blame for the status of Negroes upon the Negroes
themselves rather than upon the whites.
For an
excellent rebuttal of this position, I recommend another of my Black History
Month selections, The
Omni-Americans by Alfred Murray.
During his
academic years, Du Bois was a lead part of a survey of rural blacks in a
particular part of the South. It gathered all kinds of information about labor,
landlord-tenant relationships, family life, demographics, and more. The
government accepted it and paid the costs, but then buried it, claiming it
“touched on political matters.”
In other words,
it told the truth.
Which, then as
now, white supremacists do not want to be spoken.
On a related
note, how about this quote from a speech Du Bois gave? It sure seems relevant
now as then. And also, it is what I say to the fake-ass “christians” of our
time.
"Never before in the modern age
has a great and civilized folk threatened to adopt so cowardly a creed in the
treatment of its fellow-citizens, born and bred on its soil. Stripped of
verbiage and subterfuge and in its naked nastiness, the new American creed
says: fear to let black men even try to rise lest they become the equals of the
white. And this is the land that professes to follow Jesus Christ. The
blasphemy of such a course is only matched by its cowardice."
Here is another
passage that I saw myself in, about his transition from teaching to
advocacy:
My career as a scientist was to be
swallowed up in my role as a master of propaganda. This was not wholly to my
liking. I was no natural leader of men. I could not slap people on the back and
make friends of strangers. I could not easily break down an inherited reserve;
or at all times curb a biting, critical tongue. Nevertheless, having put my
hand to the plow, I had to go on.
Later, he got
the chance to study in Berlin. This was a mixed experience. He had some great
teachers. But he also got Heinrich von Treitschke, who was not only a bully but
an inveterate racist.
Du Bois
comments at length about the problems posed by “scientific racism,” which was
popular at the time, but, as he notes, kept moving the goalposts.
The first thing which brought me to my
senses in all this racial discussion was the continuous change in the proofs
and arguments advanced. I could accept evolution and the survival of the
fittest, provided the interval between advanced and backward races was not made
too impossible. I balked at the usual “thousand years.” But no sooner had I
settled into scientific security here, than the basis of the race distinction
was changed without explanation, without apology. I was skeptical about brain
weight; surely much depended on what brains were weighed. I was not sure about
physical measurements and social inquiries.
As he comes to
realize, the racism drove the interpretation of dubious “distinctions,” not the
other way around. It was, at its core, a caste system, created for
exploitation. This next paragraph is fascinating.
It is hard under such circumstances to
be philosophical and calm, and to think through a method of approach and
accommodation between castes. The entombed find themselves not simply trying to
make the outer world understand their essential and common humanity but even
more, as they become inured to their experience, they have to keep reminding
themselves that the great and oppressing world outside is also real and human
and in its essence honest. All my life I have had continually to haul my soul
back and say, “All white folk are not scoundrels nor murderers. They are, even
as I am, painfully human.”
The chapter on
The White World has an incredible opening, which is worth quoting.
The majority of men resent and always
have resented the idea of equality with most of their fellow men. This has had
physical, economic, and cultural reasons: the physical fear of attack; the
economic strive to avert starvation and secure protection and shelter; but more
especially I presume the cultural and spiritual desire to be one’s self without
interference from others; to enjoy that anarchy of the spirit which is
inevitably the goal of all consciousness. It is only in highly civilized times
and places that the conception arises of an individual freedom and development,
and even that was conceived of as the right of a privileged minority, and was
based on the degradation, the exclusion, the slavery of most others. The
history of tribes and clans, of social classes and all nations, and of race
antipathies in our own world, is an exemplification of this fight against
equality and inability even to picture its possibility.
This is,
unfortunately, all too true. If I were to pick one human trait that I think
exemplifies our capacity for evil, it is our lust for supremacy. We have to be
able to look down on other people, even if it harms us too. (In contrast, our
capacity to love and cooperate with each other is our greatest capacity for
good.)
Du Bois also
talks about the problem of white guilt. For someone like me, whose ancestors
weren’t even Americans during slavery, yet who has benefited from white
privilege, this really makes sense. I wish more people were open to this
knowledge.
It may be objected here that so general
a statement is not fair; that there are many white folk who feel the unfairness
and crime of color and race prejudice and have toiled and sacrificed to
counteract it. This brings up the whole question of social guilt. When, for
instance, one says that the action of England toward the darker races has been
a course of hypocrisy, force and greed covering four hundred years it does not
mean to include in that guilt many persons of the type of William Wilberforce
and Granville Sharpe. On the other hand because British history has not
involved the guilt of all Britons we cannot jump to the opposite and equally
fallacious conclusion that there has been no guilt; that the development of the
British Empire is a sort of cosmic process with no individual human being at
fault.
He goes on:
In the history of England, France,
America, Germany and Italy, we have villains who have selfishly and criminally
desired and accomplished what made for the suffering and degradation of
mankind. We have had others who desired the uplift and worked for the uplift of
all men. And we have had a middle class of people who sometimes ignorantly and
sometimes consciously shifted the balance now here, and now there; and when, in
the end, this balance of public opinion, this effective social action, has made
for the degradation of mankind or in so far as it has done this, that part of
England which has allowed this or made it possible is blood-guilty of the
result.
That sounds
harsh, but he is right. A society that goes along with this is complicit. Full
stop.
Another line in
this chapter stood out to me, in part because I literally blogged
about the idea back when our relationship with religion was starting to
crumble, as we slowly figured out that it wasn’t about God at all, but about a
supremacist political movement.
Why, man of mine, you would not have
the courage to live one hour as a black man in America, or as a Negro in the
whole wide world. Ah, yes, I know what you whisper to such accusation. You say
dryly that if we had good sense, we would not live either; and that the fact
that we do submit to life as it is and yet laugh and dance and dream, is but
another proof that we are idiots.
Seriously.
White evangelicals wouldn’t last one freaking day as black people. They would
utterly lose their shit. Instead, they act like being called out on the most
hateful things they say is somehow “persecution.” Yep. I had a relative try to
claim it was worse that I called her out on her racism than that she was saying
racist stuff. And my dad literally said he cut me out of his life because I
called him a racist for saying Nazi-level shit.
There is also a
great passage in which Du Bois takes on the reality that “race” is a social
construct. He and a not-entirely-imaginary arguer discuss that yes, most black
people in the United States have significant white ancestry, for, well, reasons
rather unsavory. And likewise, plenty of white people have black
ancestry.
So, if we are
pretty much “brown and beige,” how do we know who is black?
I recognize it quite easily and with
full legal sanction; the black man is a person who must ride “Jim Crow” in
Georgia.
And here is yet
another prescient passage:
The democracy which the white world
seeks to defend does not exist. It has been splendidly conceived and discussed,
but not realized. If it ever is to grow strong enough for self-defence and for
embracing the world and developing human culture to its highest, it must
include not simply the lower classes among whites now excluded from voice in
the control of industry; but in addition to that it must include the colored
peoples of Asia and Africa, now hopelessly imprisoned by poverty and ignorance.
Unless these latter are included and in so far as they are not, democracy is a
mockery and contains within itself the seeds of its own destruction.
This hints at
his next point, which is at the root of our current political upheaval.
Democracy cannot be mere political equality - the right to vote, as important
as it is. It must include social and economic equality, or the vote is
meaningless.
Many assume that an upper social class
maintains its status mainly by reason of its superior culture. It may, however,
maintain its status because of its wealth and political power and in that case
its ranks can be successfully invaded only by the wealthy. In white America, it
is in this direction that we have undoubtedly changed the older pattern of
social hierarchy. Birth and culture still count, but the main avenue to social
power and class domination is wealth: income and oligarchic economic power, the
consequent political power and the prestige of those who own and control
capital and distribute credit. This makes a less logical social hierarchy and
one that can only be penetrated by the will and permission of the ruling
oligarchy or the chances of gambling. Education, thrift, hard work and
character undoubtedly are influential, but they are implemented with power only
as they gain wealth; and as land, natural resources, credit and capital are
increasingly monopolized, they gain wealth by permission of the dominating
wealthy class.
This is,
unfortunately, the case. Even with my mostly self-taught education, I can
guarantee that I have more thrift and character, and have worked harder than
people like Trump can imagine. But those born with money get to pilfer even
more.
Du Bois also
looks at black culture, and, unsurprisingly, he has some criticism. (Anyone who
has read The Souls of Black Folk already knows that he, like all
thoughtful members of any group, wishes to improve that group.) I didn’t take
any particular notes here, in part because it is like sticking one’s nose in a
place it doesn’t belong.
After that
comes a chapter on World War One and propaganda. He again notes that his
earlier naivete has been replaced with a more systemic and economic
understanding of the problem.
I had come to the place where I was
convinced that science, the careful social study of the Negro problems, was not
sufficient to settle them; that they were not basically, as I had assumed,
difficulties due to ignorance but rather difficulties due to the determination
of certain people to suppress and mistreat the darker races.
He goes on to
note that even suppression of evil men isn’t enough. There needs to be a
complete reworking of systems and the subconscious stories we tell
ourselves.
Another
fascinating idea in this chapter is Du Bois understanding that the causes of
World War One were not exactly what we were taught in school. Underrated was
Germany’s desire to join the list of imperialist nations, with colonies to
match.
(Actually, I
read a book recently which does take a look at this: George,
Nicholas, and Wilhelm by Miranda Carter. It’s a good read.)
As part of his
advocacy efforts, Du Bois wrote a resolution that was adopted by a conference
of black organizations during the war.
“We trace the real cause of this World
War to the despising of the darker races by the dominant groups of men, and the
consequent fierce rivalry among European nations in their effort to use darker
and backward people for purposes of selfish gain regardless of the ultimate
good of the oppressed. We see permanent peace only in the extension of the
principle of government by the consent of the governed, not simply among the
smaller nations of Europe, but among the natives of Asia and Africa, the
Western Indies and the Negroes of the United States.”
And also, this
description of a certain person:
William Taft, fat, genial and mediocre,
had no grasp of world affairs nor international trends.
True that. He
also describes how Taft pretty much threw black southerners under the bus in
his federal appointments.
Another
interesting passage in the book is Du Bois’ contrast of his experiences in
England - where he made friends including H. G. Wells - and the way white
people tended to avoid him in America.
I early assumed that most Americans did
not wish my personal acquaintance or contact with me except in purely business
relations, and that many of them would repay any approach on my part with
deliberate insult, while most of them would be at least embarrassed. Probably I
was often wrong in this assumption, but I was right often enough to prove to
myself that my rule was wise and a great help to my own peace and quiet.
I get his
introversion here, and he admits he could have been more outgoing. But it is
true that constant rejection isn’t conducive to risk-taking. The fact that
Brits, hardly known for extroversion as a culture, were more open to his
friendship says a lot.
Want another
bit in which this book sounds like the present? He literally mentions 1619.
This is nearly a century before the 1619
Project became a thing. So, this is nothing new. This isn’t some 21st
Century “woke” invention at all. Black people have been saying it for
centuries.
The final
chapter - nearly 50 pages long - is entitled “Revolution,” and it gets into a
lot of the history of how and why Du Bois left the NAACP after years of
service. He had some involvement with the Communist Party in the United States
before becoming frustrated with the Russian leaders completely misunderstanding
the role of race in American politics.
The stupidest
example of this was the leaders’ approach to a case in which black men was
falsely accused of assaulting white prostitutes on a train. The NAACP had hired
Clarence Darrow (who knew a few things about trying cases…), and expected to
get the case quietly dismissed.
The Russian
ideologues, on the other hand, decided that it would be better to sacrifice the
accused in the hopes of stirring up a revolution.
All this was based on abysmal ignorance
of the pattern of race prejudice in the United States. About the last thing
calculated to arouse the white workers of America would be the defense of a
Negro accused of attacking a white woman, even though the Negro was probably
innocent and the woman a prostitute.
Yeah, that was
a terrible idea.
He did,
however, take from these experiences a deeper understanding of how democracy
was failing in the United States in the 1920s and 30s.
I had been brought up with the
democratic idea that this general welfare was the object of democratic action
in the state, of allowing the governed a voice in government. But through the
crimson illumination of war, I realized and, afterward by travel around the
world, saw even more clearly that so-called democracy today was allowing the
mass of people to have only limited voice in government; that democratic
control of what are at present the most important functions of men: work and
earning an living and distributing goods and services; that here we did not
have a democracy; we had oligarchy, and oligarchy based on monopoly and income;
and this oligarchy was as determined to deny democracy in industry as it had
once been determined do deny democracy in legislation and choice of
officials.
You don’t say.
And there’s more that sounds like today:
During the nineteenth century the
overwhelming influence of the economic activities of men upon their thought and
action was, as Marx insisted, clear; but it was not until the twentieth century
that the industrial situation called not only for understanding but for action.
Modern business enterprise organized for private profit was throttling
democratic government, choking art and literature and leading work and industry
into a dangerous paradox by increasing the production of things for sale and
yet decreasing even more rapidly the number of persons able to buy and the
amount of money they could spend; thus throwing industry into periodic
convulsions.
Yep, here we
are today. Let’s just replace workers with AI, and hope “someone” still has any
income to buy the things produced. We are headed for another depression, and
for the same stupid reasons as the first.
Despite his
admiration for Marx (who I agree was pretty brilliant in identifying the
problems of industrialized capitalism even if his proposals were more utopian
than pragmatic), Du Bois was not much of a revolutionary. He preferred reform -
yet another way he and I are similar.
I was not and am not a communist. I do
not believe in the dogma of inevitable revolution in order to right economic
wrong. I think war is worse than hell, and that it seldom or never forwards the
advance of the world.
Cue the Beatles…
Those are my
thoughts on this book. Du Bois really is one of my favorite thinkers, and
definitely on my guest list for my all-time dinner party. I’d definitely
recommend this book for understanding our national sin and its ongoing
reverberations.
