Transcription by Maria Araújo. Thank you, Maria! Episode post here.
Matt Teichman:
Hello, and welcome to Elucidations, a
philosophy podcast recorded at the University of
Chicago. With
me today is Chike
Jeffers,
Associate Professor of Philosophy at Dalhousie University, and he is
here to discuss the social and political philosophy of W.E.B Du
Bois. Chike Jeffers,
welcome.
Chike Jeffers:
Thank you.
Matt Teichman:
W.E.B. Du Bois is a major intellectual who wrote a whole
bunch of books over a whole lifetime. Maybe, as a way into some of his thinking,
we could talk about how he viewed stuff like culture and politics. So: what did
he think politics was about?
Chike Jeffers:
Yeah, so that’s a good question. I think that if one
looks at his most famous book—which is his 1903 book, The Souls of Black
Folk—the second
chapter of that book is a historical account of what was called the Freedmen’s
Bureau. It was a bureau of
the government, established after the Civil
War, to handle many different
aspects of the newly freed people’s lives—including land
distribution,
and various other things.
Du Bois was a historian. And in that regard, it’s unsurprising that a chapter of the book is a historical account. Yet at the same time, I think that we can read that chapter as also a political analysis—that is, an analysis of power, particularly governmental power, in this case. And I think that, read as a political analysis, as an analysis of a form of government—of its successes, and its failures, and its problems, in that sense—he stands in a tradition with Aristotle, considering various regimes, and other political thinkers through the ages.
But what I would say is perhaps more important, when thinking about Du Bois as a thinker of politics, is what he had to say about non-governmental forms of political power. And here, I’m thinking of leadership—group leadership. I mean, arguably, governments are just one form of group leadership. But if we can say that within a society, we can contrast non-governmental forms of leadership, then that was among his most prominent concerns. The third chapter of The Souls of Black Folk is a critique of Booker T. Washington. And Booker T. Washington was, at the time that the book came out, the most prominent black leader in the United States. He was the head of a school called The Tuskegee Institute (today, Tuskegee University). And he was very influential in terms of the approach that was being taken to higher education for black people, and also questions around how they should deal with disenfranchisement and segregation.
Du Bois criticizes Booker T. Washington’s so-called accommodationism—the fact that Washington advised that black Americans should concentrate on building up their economic power, and allow political power to come eventually. And so Du Bois was an advocate of immediate civil rights. That’s a good example of how leadership was of great concern to him. And one of his more controversial ideas is the idea of ‘the talented tenth’. Du Bois had the view that we can generally expect that around a tenth of people are going to have the abilities and potential interest to lead; and that we should educate and empower them so that they can pull along the rest of us. It’s a form of elitism, one might say, if one defines elitism as believing that there ought to be elites. This is certainly an argument for an elite. But nevertheless, notably, an elite whose goal is not to distance themselves from the masses, but rather, to serve the masses through leading them into modern knowledge and habits.
Matt Teichman:
So we’re in America at the end of the 19th century. The
slaves have been freed, and there’s this question: what do we do now? Booker
T. Washington’s answer to that question was: the thing for slaves who were
recently freed to do is build up economic
power,
economic infrastructure, and wealth, start businesses, develop useful skills,
begin making things. And then, once you’ve accumulated a certain amount of
cultural influence through economic power, then, maybe, being able to enter into
positions of political leadership will just sort of come naturally. Whereas Du
Bois was skeptical of that and thought: ‘No, no, the first thing we need to do
is get into positions of political leadership’—something like that?
Chike Jeffers:
That’s an interesting characterization. Here are some of
the things that I’d say to, perhaps, correct it. First, a useful point about the
historical context. Du Bois says, at the beginning of the chapter on Booker
T. Washington, that
Washington’s rise is the most striking thing in the history of black America
since 1876. And it’s important that he says 1876—and he’s not saying, for
example, 1865, right? 1865, as many people would know, is the end of the Civil
War; and by 1865, you have the abolition of
slavery. And
thus, people are by that point
emancipated. 1876 is
the end of the period known as
Reconstruction. During
the period known as Reconstruction, the federal government militarily occupied
the South—the breakaway Confederate
States. There were
restrictions on the ability of those who had seceded—who had led
secession—to
politically participate, and there was the removal, you might say, of the
restrictions on participation—of African-Americans.
And so, during the period of Reconstruction, you have black people in office— in state governments, and even sending representatives to Congress. I think there was even a black governor at one point. Anyway, black people hold elected office, somewhat regularly, during this very unique period of American history known as Reconstruction—which comes to an end by 1876. There is a closely contested election, and the presidency goes to the Republican candidate, as I recall. The deal that they make with the Democrats is that they get the presidency, but they’ll pull the troops out of the South. There’s already been an attempt to retake power by the white leadership of the South, and that continues after that.
And we see, in the decades after Reconstruction, the rise of segregation and Jim Crow law, as it’s generally known. That’s where you have not only the fact that black people are no longer in office, but the hollowing out of the right to vote. There had been the ‘15th amendment’ that had granted black men the right to vote—but states enact a series of laws to bring it about so that few to no black people are in a position to be able to vote.
So, coming back now to Du Bois and Washington. I think that that’s important historical context, because the idea is: Du Bois wants to say that we shouldn’t accept this backslide, so to speak, in terms of political freedom and participation; that the right to vote is an essential part of citizenship. And that black people shouldn’t simply accept the kinds of public proscription—the kind of public insult, really, that was enacted through the various forms of segregating public spaces, and accommodations, and transport, and so on.
Yes—he’s critical of that focus that Washington has on pulling oneself up by one’s bootstraps, as they say, through gaining wealth. Du Bois is critical of the ways in which that’s an accepting of a kind of fall. If you leave out Reconstruction, then it seems as bad as segregation is—it’s this step up from what came right before. It’s important to recognize that it’s this fall, actually, from what has come, and Du Bois is criticizing the ways that Washington is accepting the fall, so to speak.
Matt Teichman:
And did he think it wasn’t important to build up
economic power? Or is the point more: ‘well, don’t just focus on building up
economic power’?
Chike Jeffers:
Yes. The idea wouldn’t be that you gain political power
first, for Du Bois. The idea is definitely: those are two simultaneous
needs. And just to go into Du Bois’ arguments—I’d say that chapter is one of
the most interesting works in the history of African-American political
philosophy, because he really tries to pull off a tightly argued internal
criticism of Booker T. Washington. What we philosophers mean by internal
criticism is: the kind of critique in which one shows that by accepting
premises held by the person being critiqued, you can then get to the opposite
conclusion, and show what’s wrong with the conclusion that the person being
criticized holds.
Du Bois says that one of the major problems with Washington’s view is that he believes that black people need to build up their wealth and participate in the economy. He argues that in a way, Washington is not understanding the kinds of preconditions for successful participation in a free market economy—because, according to Du Bois, to lack the right to vote is to lack the ability to protect one’s wealth in a free market economy. And we can easily explain that. If there is a decision, for example, to lay heavy taxes on some particular activity, or lay taxes heavily if you live in certain areas versus other areas—you can imagine that being a cover for economically disempowering the targeted class of people. What do you do if you have no political voice? How do you fight that? And so, precisely in order to participate in and benefit from a free market economy—according to Du Bois—Washington’s goal requires political rights.
Just to mention another interesting argument that he makes of this sort—he argues that Washington’s view is very much based on a kind of virtuous self-control. That’s why he emphasizes things like thrift—the ability to save. And so he has these virtues of thrift and hard work that he’s encouraging, in order for black people to build up wealth. What Du Bois argues is that accepting the loss of civil rights—in the form of segregation—is to undermine the character traits that Washington is seeking. There’s a lack of self-respect that is inculcated by the idea that you have to use this bathroom, and the fact that you are directed to these lesser facilities; and that it is, in some way, tainting for you to use the same facilities; and things of that nature. That’s the kind of thing that takes a toll on one’s self-concept. And that the kinds of virtues that Washington is advocating are, thereby, ill-served, by accepting the loss of civil rights.
Matt Teichman:
That’s really interesting. So, it’s not just this
practical point—that in order to accumulate wealth, you need to be able to
vote, and you need to be able to run for office, etc. It’s also that, in order
to exhibit the virtues involved—thriftiness, resourcefulness, and so
forth—in order to exhibit those virtues, you also have to exhibit the virtues
that go along with being accorded political power—i.e. self-respect.
Chike Jeffers:
Yes, yes.
Matt Teichman:
So it’s like there’s a virtue side to the same point.
Chike Jeffers:
Yes. And it’s a response to the way in which Washington
had emphasis on these kinds of virtues. In fact, I do think that it might be
interesting, at some point—I don’t know whether I would do it—but I think
it’d be interesting for someone to write on Washington as a theorist of virtues.
Matt Teichman:
Yeah.
Chike Jeffers:
But Du Bois’ response to that, in order to criticize his
accommodationism—which is the term that gets used for his acceptance of the
loss of political access, and civil rights, in order to focus on practical
education for wealth building—
Matt Teichman:
And was Washington’s idea, ‘Let’s temporarily not focus on
being politically enfranchised, because first we need to do this, and then later
we’ll get politically enfranchised’? Or is it just, ‘Let’s just give up on the entire
project of being politically enfranchised, because this other thing is better’?
Chike Jeffers:
Yeah, no, I mean—the idea of Washington, as I
understand it, is that that will come. You can maybe take him as saying that the
power of the almighty dollar will bring it about that, eventually, we won’t be
able to be ignored as a political force. Washington was a master of trying to
appeal to a certain white conservative
perspective. So
it could also be read as, ‘Yes, eventually, we’ll gain political power, when
we’ve built up our abilities to exercise that wisely.’
Matt Teichman:
Hmm.
Chike Jeffers:
There’s two ways, I think, of articulating his view,
there. And I think he maybe even believed both, to some degree. But you can see
that, you know—one of the ways is more insulting to black people than the
other.
Matt Teichman:
Right. One’s more insulting; and one, also, is
politically very useful for the people in power.
Chike Jeffers:
Right. It’s an acceptance of the fact that the people in
power have brought that situation into reality.
Matt Teichman:
So we’ve mentioned segregation a couple of times. What
were Du Bois’s views on
segregation?
I kind of assume he was anti—but probably there’s more to it than just that.
Chike Jeffers:
Yes. Well, he was. I’ve mentioned a particular argument
that he had about the effect of segregation on the
virtues. And
then, in the first decade of the 20th century, he started an organization called
the Niagara movement, which
was pressing for political and civil rights. That organization was short-lived,
but, in a way, fed into the founding of the
NAACP—The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People. So, Du Bois was a founding member of the
NAACP—many will know the name of that organization, because it was a very
prominent civil rights organization in the 20th century, and continues to exist
today. Du Bois helped to found that organization; he edited
the journal of that organization, called The
Crisis; and, as a spokesperson, in
that regard, for the organization, he was an important fighter against
segregation.
But, in terms of complicating things, there is a turn he makes in the 1930s—one might provocatively call it a Washingtonian turn—because his view on segregation changes somewhat, and it leads to a kind of falling out. He eventually steps down from his position as editor of The Crisis because of that—and from the executive board of the NAACP. The position that he comes to, in the 1930s, is not that segregation is okay. Indeed—I think he always believed that the end of segregation is necessary for justice. But it does become his view that the focus on fighting it may be, in a way, working to the detriment of forms of self-organization that can meet the needs of African-Americans and strengthen them economically. So you can see the ways in which it almost seems as if he’s going to the position that he previously opposed, in the case of Washington.
There are a number of differences between what he’s holding in the 1930s, and what he opposed in Washington. He’s making a more socialist turn at this time. He’s thinking about what it means to pursue an economy that is based on cooperation and meeting needs—rather than competition and profit maximizing. These are among the important things that he’s thinking about. He’s thinking about what we could call black self-segregation—though that’s not the best way to put it, because the idea is that we’re not trying to accept that segregation is going to last indefinitely. But while it is a problem, what are we going to do to meet our needs and advance our interests? That’s why at that point, he’s saying, ‘Hey, look. I don’t see the end of segregation being around the corner. Are we doing enough to build ourselves up?’ He’s having this more cooperative model of economics, at this time.
This gets to the matter of culture. We’ve already said that he has interesting things to say about both politics and culture, even if we started by talking about politics. In any case, one thing that he expresses in some of these writings of the 1930s is the worry that many, particularly among the black elite and middle-class, are happy with focusing on fighting segregation because of certain character flaws, and bad motivations: namely, the motivation of not being stuck with the rest of black people. That is, a desire to be away from the black masses, and to be able to assimilate, so to speak—the disdain for the black community, perhaps. He’s worried that self-hatred is a possible feature of the idea that we’ve got to fight to be allowed to be among white people, as freely as possible.
And again, it’s not that he thinks that that’s all that fighting segregation means. He thinks that segregation ultimately should end. He is a cosmopolitan, in the sense that he does believe that things go best when there is a sense of—across all kinds of lines of difference—communication, and interaction, and so on. That being said, it is also important to him that black people value themselves; that they overcome the kind of self-hatred that a racist society inculcates; and that they understand the ways in which their community is good enough. You know—understand the ways in which the black community is a realm of possibility to be valued, rather than something that one would want to run away from. And thus, he is both trying to encourage black people to meet their material needs and also start to deviate from a very capitalist-minded mentality. And he is also trying to fight what he sees as black self-hatred, especially among black elites, and thus encourage black people to value their communities and the distinctive cultural worlds that black communities are.
Matt Teichman:
And you hear this a lot in the media today. There are
people pushing back against some version of an anti-segregationist policy, where
the view seems to be: ‘well, sure, it’s not like we want power to be unevenly
distributed; and we want people to be able to have the same opportunities, but
at the same time, I grew up in a black neighborhood and it was great, because
everybody was on the same page, and we could enjoy a pride in our shared
cultural experiences together’. Is the solution really to break that up and
diffuse everybody randomly into the population, so that we don’t have
neighborhoods of people who take pride in their shared experiences, etc.? It’s
very tricky though, because you don’t want to fall back on unevenly distributing
power and opportunity, either.
Chike Jeffers:
Yeah, you have this as an ongoing debate right now, in
political philosophy. Elizabeth
Anderson made a big splash
with her book The Imperative of
Integration, and took a very strong
stance that integration—including of the kind that socially integrates
people—is necessary to ending racial inequality in the United States. Partly
because of the ways in which there is access to social
capital through
integration—that she sees as important and necessary to ending black
inequality, and ending inequality as it affects African-Americans,
especially. There have been responses to that book, including a chapter in
Tommie Shelby’s recent book
Dark
Ghettos—arguing
that we should not accept that the break-up of black communities—the
dissolution, we might say, of majority black communities and
neighborhoods—we should not take that as the necessary means to reducing black
inequality.
And so, he has arguments for that. I myself participated in a symposium on the book, and one of the points that I made is that even if we were to accept, just as a practical matter, that she was right—that it was exceedingly hard to see how, without more integration, black equality could be achieved—if you were right about that, it’s important to recognize just what a tragic conclusion that is. And that’s what Du Bois would have us say. That if we come to the conclusion that black people, being amongst themselves, cannot advance, but they need to be around white people more in order to advance, then that is a blow to black self-esteem that is worth mourning.
When I write my chapter where I’m speaking about his views on politics in the 1930s, this will be one of the topics that I will be dealing with. And the way in which he is very much relevant to the contemporary debate about de facto segregation. Not de jure—not as enforced by law—but de facto, as remaining in light of previous legal and social structures. There’s an ongoing debate in political philosophy about how we deal with that, and Du Bois, therefore, is this very interesting and relevant figure.
Matt Teichman:
Did he have any proposed way of squaring this circle?
Let’s say I’m on the city council, and I’m really concerned that people in this
neighborhood don’t have access to good schools, and people in that neighborhood
do have access to all the best schools. My power is limited, but I do have the
power to fund a school bus program that gets people around to more different
schools. Ah, wait—but now that I’ve done that, maybe I’m worried that I’m
breaking up communities. So, it seems like Du Bois was also vexed by this
dilemma, and I wonder whether he had any thoughts about how to deal with it.
Chike Jeffers:
Yeah, that’s an interesting question. He dies before
busing programs are a thing.
Matt Teichman:
So it’s anachronistic, a little bit.
Chike Jeffers:
Right, yeah. You know, that would be an important reason
he didn’t weigh in on this conflict.
But, you know, one thing will help to think through how he thought about the matter. So I said that when he’s writing in the 1930s, part of what is going on there is a kind of pessimism about reaching the end of segregation any time soon, right? There is an argument for being more self-reliant—which, as I have mentioned a couple of times, is partly him also wanting to, increasingly, extricate African-Americans from a certain capitalist mindset. But his view in the 1930s is: are we just going to continue to wait, indefinitely, to begin giving at least equal attention to the ways in which we can build up our communities economically and meet people’s needs?
By the early 1960s—and he dies in 1963; he dies not in the United States, but in Ghana, where he moves, I believe, in 1961. In any case, there is a work of his, an essay called Whither Now and Why. It was initially presented to social science teachers—a conference of social science teachers, I believe. The conference was at a historically black university, so I’m guessing it was an organization of black social science teachers.
I’ve written about this essay. It’s from 1960, so he’s around 92—an indicator of what a long and productive life he lived. But there’s a very interesting volume, edited by Eric Schliesser, called Ten Neglected Classics of the History of Philosophy. In any case, I am fortunate to be in the volume, and my essay is on Whither Now and Why. The reason I bring it up is that in that essay, he is looking around at the political scene and no longer seeing reason to be pessimistic about the end of segregation as a legal matter. He’s writing, at this point, after you’ve already had Brown vs Board of Education, in 1954. He’s now thinking about this after you’ve got the Montgomery bus boycott, and that early success—which, of course, is now propelling Martin Luther King Jr. into a position of leadership.
He’s thinking at a time where there’s a lot of activity, and apparently some gains, in terms of ending segregation. And he dies, of course, shortly before you have the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. He dies right before some of the most important final crumblings of Jim Crow law—of segregation. His view in Whither Now and Why is that the coming end of segregation—which he’s now optimistic is soon, as opposed to pessimistic in the 1930s—he thinks it in fact raises questions about black people’s self-organization with a new intensity. That is: now it’s going to be less of a matter of, ‘you have to’, and there will, in that case, perhaps be more temptation to flee the community. To allow the black community to, in a sense, ‘whither’ away as a distinct entity.
At that point, in 1960, he was saying: this is, yet again, unsatisfactory. We should not have legal segregation. We should have complete equal rights, and freedom of movement and association and everything, as citizens of this country; and also, we should continue to seek the goal of flourishing black communities. One of the cultural components here is his Pan-Africanism. Du Bois was very much invested in the solidarity and interaction of Africans, and the descendants of Africans throughout the continent, and the diaspora—the African diaspora being a way of saying ‘the scattering of people of African descent, particularly through the transatlantic slave trade’. He worries that the black kids are going to go to these majority-white schools, they’re not going to learn anything about Africa and the Caribbean, and that they’re not going to feel that sense of connection that he thinks is actually vitally important to African-American advancement, in the widest and fullest possible sense. Which would include for him, very importantly, a kind of cultural advancement rooted in the uniqueness of the community.
Matt Teichman:
Yeah. I think I share this intuition that, probably,
what we want in that situation is—I don’t know what—a freely chosen
distribution of different populations, geographically.
Chike Jeffers:
Yes, yeah.
Matt Teichman:
Whether that ends up with a lot of diversity in some
places, and a lot of pooling of similar people in other places, that’ll be left
to chance.
Chike Jeffers:
Sure.
Matt Teichman:
But we want it to be everybody’s choice about where they
live.
Chike Jeffers:
Uh-huh.
Matt Teichman:
But then, one potential puzzle that arises is: how do
you tell the difference between a pooling of similar people in similar places
that’s freely chosen, and everybody feels great about it, and a de facto pooling
of people into specific places that reinforces an oppressive power hierarchy
between them? Because if you ask a lot of the people who are in that situation,
many of them will probably feel like: ‘it’s just freely chosen where we’re all
living and everything’s great’. How do we distinguish those two situations?
From a certain point of view, somebody might try to argue that they’re similar.
Chike Jeffers:
I think that it is important to ask why are people
tending to live together. Is it, for instance, because they are being excluded
from certain other communities? Do people by and large have the means to choose
which communities they live in? There’s a number of things that we would want to
ask. And when looking at the current situation, we would say that—in many
respects, to this day—a lot of the fact that you have concentrated black
areas, which tend, in many major cities, to be more impoverished—a lot of that
has to do with not yet being at the point where everyone has the means to
choose, with a wide variety of options, where they’re going to live and work and
play, and so on.
One way of thinking about what the goal is: there would not be forms of exclusion such that a black person who wanted to live somewhere that did not have lots of black people would be unable to do so, because of exclusion. But also, that you wouldn’t need to have black people desiring to move away from majority-black communities, because those communities would also be economically flourishing. So that it really would be the kind of, as you say, free choice, between your concentrated communities, and then your more diffuse—you know, there’d be your concentrated black communities; and perhaps, also, your concentrated other racial or ethnic communities. And then many communities, perhaps, that would be much more diverse in general. If there was really free choice, it would be a different situation from the situation that exists even today.
In terms of Du Bois’s view, the picture of having choice through various flourishing communities—I think that he would like that picture. The way that you articulated your position—which is an understandable one—is that you’d see where things end up when people have that free choice. Where they end up is where they end up. And I’d say that the Duboisian position—which would be one that I would share—is that: yes, they should have every choice; no, we shouldn’t be trying to disallow them from ending up wherever they want to end up. And yet, it is legitimate and valuable that some of us advocate for continued concern for building up flourishing black communities.
Matt Teichman:
Chike Jeffers, thanks so much for joining us.
Chike Jeffers:
Thank you.
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