Episode 110: Chike Jeffers discusses the social and political philosophy of W.E.B. Du Bois
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What is the episode’s opening and who is the guest?
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Hello and welcome to Elucidations, a philosophy podcast recorded at the University of Chicago. With me today is Chi K 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. GK Jeffers, welcome.
Thank
you. So W B. Du Bois is a major intellectual who wrote a whole bunch of books over a whole lifetime. Maybe as a just a sort of a way into some of his thinking, we could talk about how he viewed stuff like culture and politics so what did he think like politics was about?
Yes, well that's a good question. I think that if one looks at his most famous book, which is his nineteen oh three book, The Souls of Black Folk, the second chapter of that book is kind of 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, you know, the newly freed peoples lives, you know, including land distribution and various other things. So Du Bois was a historian, right? And in that regard it's unsurprising that a chapter of the book is a historical account. And 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 uh, you know, Aristotle considering various regimes and and other political thinkers through the ages. But What I would also 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 for uh is just one form of group leadership, but if we can say that you know, within a society we can contrast non-governmental forms of readership, right? Then that was uh among his most prominent concerns, right?
So 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, so to speak. in the United States. He was the head of a school called the Tuskegee Institute, today I believe Tuskegee In uh 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.
How does Du Bois define politics and power in the *Souls of Black Folk*?
So Du Bois. Criticizes. Booker T. Washington's so called accommodationism, right? The fact that Washington uh advised that black Americans should concentrate on building up their economic power and allow political power to you know come eventually, so to speak. And uh so Du Bois was an advocate of you know immediate civil rights. So that's a good example of of how leadership was of great concern to him, and one of his more controversial ideas is the idea of the talented tenth. So Du Bois had the view that that we can generally expect that our around a tenth of people are going to have kind of the uh the abilities and potential interest to lead and that we should educate and empower them so that they can kind of pull along the rest of us.
It's you know a form of elitism. One might say if one defines elitism as believing that there ought to be elites, right? This is certainly an argument for an elite. But nevertheless, notably an elite whose goal is not to distance themselves right from the masses, but rather To serve the masses through
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the episode’s opening and who is the guest?
0:00–4:04
2
How does Du Bois define politics and power in the *Souls of Black Folk*?
4:04–18:34
3
Why does Du Bois criticize Booker T. Washington’s “accommodationism”?
18:34–27:04
4
What is the “Talented Tenth” and how does it relate to Du Bois’s view of leadership?
27:04–32:36
5
How does Du Bois address segregation, the Niagara Movement, and the NAACP?
32:36–36:50
Speakers
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