7=\ SOC 411 AFRICAN SOCIAL THEORY

NOTES
Tafadzwa Blessing Choto – Midlands State University

Topic 1: Social Theory and the Criticisms of Eurocentric Sociological Narratives

1.1 The Development of Social Theorizing

-Sociological theorizing originated in the midst of what economic historian Karl Polanyi
called the “great transformation.” Located primarily in Western Europe during the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, varying in timing and effect from one country to
another, this transformation culminated in the demise of the pre-modern world and the
rise of the modern world. (Royce 2015)

- The rise of sociology has been attributed to the triple revolution—an intellectual and
cultural revolution: the Enlightenment; a social and political revolution: the French
Revolution of 1789; and an economic revolution: the rise of capitalism and v the subsequent
process of industrialization. These three intertwined revolutions, preceded by the Renaissance
and the Reformation, radically altered the European landscape. They gave rise to new
worldviews and aspirations, new attitudes and orientations, new political and economic
institutions, and new forms of social organization and patterns of living; they set into motion
new social forces, new developmental dynamics, and new social movements; and they
brought new problems and new possibilities onto the historical stage. (Royce 2015)

1.2 The Coloniality of Sociology

- The discipline of sociology and social theorising has its roots in Western Europe but early
sociologists also theorised about non-European societies, and these theories reflect certain
biases for instance the reproduction of the civilizational backwardness thesis. The
development of sociology coincided with the period of colonialism and one of the key
justifications of colonialism was the idea that the colonised where undeveloped persons in
contrast to the ‘civilised Europeans. Colonialism was thus justified as being an attempt to
civilise the uncivilised. Colonial difference did not just produce myths and knowledge about
the colonized, but also produced myths and knowledge about the colonizer. While the
colonized were assumed to be ‘backward’, the ‘West’ positioned itself as the beacon of
civilization. Through this binary, the myth was able to be produced that the ‘West’, as the
civilized agents of the world, had a moral duty to bring their civilization to the rest of the
globe (Meghji 2021).

- Sociologists not only bought into this myth of colonial difference, but also were committed
to buttressing it. For instance Durkheim ‘s social thought revolves around his ideas of the
societal evolution from mechanical into organic solidarity, as primitive societies become
‘advanced’ (Durkheim 1997 [1893]). However, Durkheim’s typologies of primitive and
advanced societies is primarily based on his comparative fieldwork between Aboriginal
people in Australia and indigenous Americans, on the one hand, and European societies, on
the other (Kurasawa 2013). In this respect, in order to contrast ‘past’, ‘historic’, pre-modern
societies with advanced societies, instead of actually consulting history, Durkheim studied
colonized people in his present day. As Connell (1997) argues, it was this logic that allowed
Durkheim, in his description of mechanical solidarity and primitive societies, the colonized
were thus treated as ‘the past in the present.

- Even prior to Durkheim’s work, in Britain, Herbert Spencer (2010 [1895]) was already
publishing evolutionist ideas in his theory of militant versus industrial society (a similar
typology to Durkheim’s primitive versus modern societies). As Connell (1997, 2010) shows,
Spencer was identical to Durkheim in the way that those in the supposedly historical
‘militant’ societies were in fact the colonized in the present. In Spencer’s (2010 [1895])
sociological exposition, therefore, in order to define militant, primitive societies, he uses a
range of colonial examples from Bengal, Tasmania, Victoria and South India.

1.3 Social Theory and Eurocentrisism

-When people hear charges of Eurocentrism in sociology, they typically think that the
criticism being developed is that the sociological canon tends to be dominated by European
or Western thinkers. Indeed, it is true that the canon of social theory has developed this way
across the world, as Syed Farid Alatas (2010: 29) highlights:

Typically, a history of social thought or a course on social thought and

theory would cover theorists such as Montesquieu, Comte, Spencer,
Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Toennies, Sombart, Mannheim… generally, non-
Western thinkers are excluded.
-However we need to understand that the critique of Eurocentrism is not necessarily a critique
of European thinkers rather, it is a critique of a standpoint, where sociology adopts ‘a
particular position, a perspective, a way of seeing and not-seeing that is rooted in a
number of problematic claims and assumptions’ (Alatas and Sinha 2001: 319)

- Sociology is therefore characterised by what is called the “Eurocentric standpoint” (Go

2016) which is characterised by two concepts orientalism and bifurcation.

1.3.1. Orientalism and Social Theory

-The Eurocentric standpoint is characterised by orientalism, in virtue of producing ideas

about the non- Western world as being backward or less civilized than the Western world.

- Central to the work of those theorizing Orientalism is the idea that the binaries and
‘ontological and epistemological’ distinctions between the West and the East (Saïd 1979),
the Occident and Orient (Ahmed 2006), or simply what Hall (1992) labels the West and the
rest, are produced by the West.

- Moreover these binaries produced by the West are not value-neutral, but inherently convey
a supposition of ‘Eastern’ or ‘Oriental’ difference and inferiority (Saïd 1979: 2–3), the basic
distinction between East and West’ was taken as the ‘starting point for elaborate theories,
epics, novels, social descriptions, and political accounts concerning the Orient, its people,
customs, “mind”, destiny, and soon’.

-Orientalism, therefore, can be understood as a particular discourse that itself sought to

produce and crystallize colonial difference. This discourse relies on hierarchical binaries
between the West and the rest, such that the sanctity of Western Christianity can be compared
to the savage tribal customs of indigenous Americans and Africans, the cleanliness of
Western cities can be contrasted to the squalor of the Middle East and South Asia, Western
sexual respectability can be contrasted to the promiscuity and amorality of African women,
and the civility of everyday life in the bourgeois West can be contrasted with the rudeness of
the East (Meghji 2021)

-Orientalism was a central part of classical sociology, as it enabled comparisons between the
West and the rest which justified the idea of Western superiority. In some cases, this
sociological Orientalism was directly tied to happenings in the nation state
-Orientalism is prevalent in the writings of both Marx and Weber who were attempting to
explain the Western transition into industrial capitalism, or what we can also label broadly as
‘modernity’. However, in order to explain this Western transition into capitalism, both Marx
and Weber have an Orientalism at the core of their theories.

- For instance, Marx (1973 [1939], 2004 [1867]) in his concept of historical materialism
argued that Western societies transitioned from feudalism into capitalism as there was a shift
in the means of production, and an unequal ownership of these means of production, which
created the driving force of class antagonism between the workers and bourgeoisie.

- To Marx, this tension between the two classes was then the spirit of capitalism, as the
workers earn just enough for subsistence, while the bourgeoisie extract the surplus capital
from the workers’ labour. This class struggle as a driving force for development in the West
is contrasted to what Marx (1973 [1939]) labels as the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ that we
see in the so-called East (‘Asiatic societies’). In such a mode of production, Marx argues, the
society is in stagnation due to the absence of a dynamic class struggle, and to a state
centralized economy with no private ownership of land

-Parallel to Marx, we have Weber (2001 [1905]) arguing that central to the Western
development of capitalism is a ‘Protestant ethic’, characterized by an asceticism which rejects
the search for everyday pleasures and instead fosters a stringent dedication to work. Along
with this ascetic will to work, Weber argues that the growth of European cities and increased
specialization of the workforce led to the industrialization of the West as we know it. Just like
Marx, Weber compares this situation in the West with what he saw as stagnant societies
in the East – the Chinese, Indian and Muslim ‘worlds’ – which were seen to have
religions of ‘sensuality’ that did not have the discipline required for industrial work.
Weber (2001 [1905]: xxviii) even goes as far as to deny the presence of critical or ‘scientific’
thought in these apparently stagnant societies, as is captured in the introduction to his The
Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism:

A product of modern European civilization, studying any problem of universal history, is

bound to ask himself to what combination of circumstances the fact should be attributed that
in Western civilization, and in Western civilization only, cultural phenomena have appeared
which (as we like to think) lie in a line of development having universal significance and
value. Only in the West does science exist at a stage of development which we recognize
today as valid.”
-Weber’s dismissal of non-Western thought relies on quite significant historical inaccuracies.
Weber’s argument for the lack of scientific thought outside the West is spurious. For instance
Speaking specifically about Islam Ali Shari’ati (1986: 44) notes the fact that the Moors
(medieval Muslim inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula) conquered, and economically,
intellectually and socially advanced, large areas of Spain up until the fifteenth century; as
Shari’ati (1986) states, ‘

Prior to reaching the threshold of universal colonization and economic imperialism,

the West knew Islam very well. Islam has built one of the greatest civilizations of the
world in Europe itself, in Spain

- Once we start analysing the claims that Marx and Weber make about the ‘non-
Western world’, we can see that historical inaccuracy is fairly typical. Further, it is
through these historical inaccuracies that Marx and Weber are able to contribute to the
notion of difference between the West and the rest through the discourse of
Orientalism. Thus, as summarized by Bryan Turner (1989), one of the central
critiques of Marx and Weber is that neither of them gathered sufficient research
material to make their sweeping generalizations about ‘Asiatic societies’.

-Through their historical inaccuracies, Marx and Weber also overlook the work of people
whose research focus was explicitly on the dynamic nature of ‘Asiatic societies’. Ibn
Khaldūn, for instance, was already analysing such dynamism of ‘Asian societies’ long
before Marx and Weber came to generalize across this whole region. Inside the
theories of Marx and Weber, therefore, we can see ‘their arguments in terms of broad,
simple, contrasting oppositions which mirror quite closely the West–Rest, civilized–
rude, developed–backward oppositions of “the West and the Rest” discourse’ (Hall
1992: 223).

-Through crystallizing this West/rest binary, furthermore, Weber and Marx consequently
offered internalist accounts of capitalism and modernity that made it appear as though
capitalism developed in the West because of particular conditions within the West (the
class structure, the Protestant ethic), while it did not develop in the rest of the world
because of factors internal to those parts of the world ‘Hinduism, Islam, Confucianism,
the ‘Asiatic mode of production’ (Meghji 2021) .Through these internalist accounts of
capitalism and modernity, however, we see how Marx and Weber occlude analysis of the
 connections between the West and the rest in the development of capitalism (Meghji
2021).

1.3.2Bifurcation and Social Theory

- The Eurocentric standpoint is also characterized by bifurcation , through this bifurcation,

the West is seen as being different from ‘the rest’ of the world, and it is held that you can
both study the West independently from its relation to the rest, and build universal theory
from studying this isolated West (Meghji 2021). Bifurcation in the Eurocentric standpoint is
characterized by the belief that one can separate the West from the rest of the world, and
analyse the West outside of its global links (Bhambra 2007).

- This bifurcation is seen in sociology’s long-standing theorization of modernity. Sociology

as we know it originated as an attempt to apprehend the constitution, formation, and
reproduction of modernity. As Adams, Clemens, and Orloff (2005) argue one of the questions
driving sociology has long been: ‘‘How did societies come to be recognizably ‘modern’?’’
(Adams et al., 2005, p. 3). But conventional sociology’s account of modernity has long fallen
prey to the myth of separation, or analytic bifurcation, of spaces and places around the world.
Sociology’s standard accounts of modernity suppress the history of colonialism and
imperialism and thereby impede an understanding of the West’s entanglements with subject
peoples (Bhambra, 2007).

- In the cases of Marx and Weber, it was not simply an issue of them dismissing the existence
of a Global South they both wrote on India, China and the so-called ‘Muslim world’ – but
rather the issue of not making links between what was happening in the West and what
these same Western countries were doing in these apparently stagnant regions. This
leads to confusing situations where, for instance, in volume 3 of Capital, Marx (1998 [1894])
talks about the importance of European countries’ wealth in ‘precious metals’ for their
capital development and trade, without mentioning that such materials were expropriated
from colonial territories and imported into the metropolis. Furthermore, we can see this form
of bifurcation beyond these ‘classical’ sociologists of the nineteenth century, even in
paradigms of social thought that were positioned as being highly critical, such as critical
theory.

- A notable example of bifurcation appears in the works of Jürgen Habermas, who fails to
think about how European empires’ colonial authoritarianism allowed for the emergence of
bourgeois liberal culture in the West. Habermas (1962) analyses how in nineteenth-century
Western Europe, the emergence of institutions such as coffee houses extended the public
sphere to include larger numbers of the cultural bourgeoisie in the civic apparatus of the
nation state. However as Go (2016) points out, coffee itself was a colonial product, and not a
product that was willingly ‘traded’ by colonial territories but a resource that was forcibly
expropriated. In this case, therefore, authoritarian control in one part of the world facilitated
the rise of a bourgeois liberal culture in the other.

- Another illustration of bifurcation in critical theory is contained in the works of Max

Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno (2002 [1944]), for instance, extensively focused on what
they termed the ‘dialectic of Enlightenment’, the process through which the European
Enlightenment’s valorization of rationalism and scientific inquiry collapsed into the
scientific fascism epitomized by Nazi Germany. However, in isolating the horrors of
Nazism as the epitome of the dialectic of Enlightenment and modernity, the position
adopted by Adorno and Horkheimer fails to connect the horrors of Nazi Germany with
the long history of violence towards colonized people across the various empires, which
itself acted as a precursor to Nazism. As Wolfe (2006) has shown, many of the tactics
deployed by Nazis in the Holocaust, for instance, were based on models of genocide used in
the Spanish colonization of the Americas (such as the random shooting sprees in
concentration camps), and the British colonization of Ireland and Bengal (such as starvation
to death) and during the Herero and Nama genocide in present day Namibia which was not
only executed by the German empire, but was led by figures such as Eugen Fischer, who
was later involved in organizing the apparatus of the Holocaust. As Aimé Césaire (2001
[1950]: 36) thus shows in his Discourse on Colonialism, seeing Nazism and the practices of
empires as bifurcated clouds our ability to see the true logic of terror imbued in modernity

- Bifurcation in sociology also involves the drawing of an epistemic line between the West
and the rest, and accepting the idea that if one’s theoretical model works on ‘this side’ of the
line – on the Western side – then it can achieve universality (Tinsley (2019). It is this form of
bifurcation in sociology that has led to charges of what Bhambra (2014) terms
‘methodological Eurocentrism. Central to understanding this epistemic bifurcation is that it is
not necessarily an explicit strategy adopted by particular sociologists – it is not the case that
sociologists have consciously signed a document agreeing that if their theories work in the
West, they work everywhere. Rather, this epistemic bifurcation is built into the
‘disciplinary unconscious’ of sociology; it is an essential feature of most sociology
regardless of whether or not the sociologists guilty of this bifurcation are cognizant of
their actions (Meghji 2021)

- An illustration of this is in Foucault (1979) who argues that in Western Europe, around the
time of the eighteenth century, there is a shift in the exercise of power, where criminals
ceased to be punished through the ‘spectacle of scaffold’ (i.e. public execution and/or
torture), and instead are hidden away in prisons. Foucault’s argument is that this model of
power in the prison can be generalized to understanding disciplinary power in society, where
citizens are regulated through surveillance and a normalizing gaze. The issue with
Foucault’s account of disciplinary power is not just that it only focuses on Western
Europe; had Foucault linked the ‘covert’ surveillance-style power in the metropoles
with the overtly violent exercise of power in the colonies, then this would indeed be a
critical argument. The issue with Foucault’s viewpoint is that he offers no justification
for why he only focuses on Western Europe for modelling this theory of power – it is
here we see the assumed universality of the West which is buried in the disciplinary
unconscious. (Meghji 2021). What is being stressed in the critique of bifurcation, therefore, is
not necessarily a charge of falsity or empirical incorrectness, but rather one of incompleteness
(Meghji 2021).

1.4 Why an African Sociological Perspective

-Sociology as we know it today thus emerged at a specific time and place. It was concerned
largely with European modernity, and in particular modernity conceived as separated from
and superior to the rest of the world’s presumed ‘‘backwards-ness.’’. Just as positivist
epistemology was a response to the decaying foundations of religious certainty in the wake of
the Reformation, so too was sociology as we know it forged in a specific local context. This,
along with its connection with Western imperialism, highlights that sociology has provincial
origins; or in Connell’s (2007) terms, it has ‘‘Northern’’ origins. It comes from an imperialist
standpoint.

-Yet much of sociological theory and research masks this provincial standpoint with global
pretentions. Warranted with the premises of positivism, and readily applying its specific
categories to all times and places including to its colonized and postcolonial others. It covers
up its particularity with claims to universality. The rest of the world, outside Europe and
North America, appears as a blank slate onto which to project our otherwise provincial
categories.

Topic 2: W. E. B. Du Bois and Classical Race Theory

2.1 W. E. B. Du Bois and Race Theory

“He [Du Bois] virtually, before anyone else and more than anyone else, demolished the lies
about Negroes in their most important and creative periods of history. The truths he revealed
are not yet the property of all Americans but they have been recorded and arm us for our
contemporary battles. . . . Dr. Du Bois was not only an intellectual giant exploring the
frontiers of knowledge; he was in the first place a teacher. He would have wanted his life to
teach us something about our tasks of emancipation.” —Martin Luther King Jr., “Honoring
Dr. Du Bois,” pp. 20, 24 37

2.1.1Biography and Intellectual influences

-William Edward Burghardt Du Bois was born in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, on
February 23, 1868. His mother was Dutch African and his father French Huguenot-African.
Du Bois’ father, who committed bigamy in marrying Du Bois’ mother, left the family when
the boy was just 2 years old, but Du Bois grew up without experiencing the depth of suffering
blacks felt at that time. Du Bois’ education in the abject realities of blackness in America
came during his college years at Fisk, in Tennessee; it was his first visit to the southern
United States during the “Jim Crow” era. In addition, he taught children for two summers at a
rural Tennessee school and saw first-hand the legacy of slavery in the South. As a result, Du
Bois became an ardent advocate of social change through protest. His belief in confrontation
and dissent put Du Bois at odds with Booker T. Washington, a prominent black leader who
favoured accommodation. This disagreement with Washington influenced the early part of
Du Bois’ political life; he founded the Niagara movement in large part to counter
Washington’s arguments. Through most of his life, Du Bois generally favoured integration,
but toward the end he became discouraged at the lack of progress and increasingly turned
toward black nationalism: He encouraged blacks to work together to create their own culture,
art, and literature, and to create their own group economy of black producers and consumers.
This cultural stand was directed at creating black pride and identity; the formation of a black
economic community was the weapon to fight discrimination and black poverty. Du Bois was
also a principal force in the Pan-African movement, which was founded on the belief that all
black people share a common descent and should therefore work collectively around the
globe for equality. In the latter part of his life, Du Bois became disheartened at the lack of
change regarding the color line in the United States. In the end, he renounced his citizenship,
joined the Communist Party, and moved to the African nation of Ghana. More than any other
single person, Du Bois was responsible for black consciousness in America and probably the
world during the twentieth century. His book The Souls of Black Folk defined the problem of
the color line. He was a founding member of the National Association for the Advancement
of Colored People (NAACP) and its chief spokesperson during its most formative years. Du
Bois also produced the first scientific studies of the black condition in America (Allan 2013;
252)

THEORETICAL INFLUENCES

- Du Bois has the distinction of being one of the first persons of African descent to
scientifically research and write on race (Durr, 2001; B.S. Edwards, 2001; Juguo, 2001; D.L.
Lewis, 1993, 2000; Lott, 1999, 2001). His Africanity, or blackness, is important insofar as
Africans, or blacks, have historically and continue currently to be considered one of the most
thoroughly racialized groups—though under theorized from their own historical horizons,
cultural conditions, social situations and political positions—in the history of race and racism
(Gordon, 1995). In works such as The Souls of Black Folk, “The People of Peoples and Their
Gifts to Men,” and Darkwater, and most especially in later works like The Gift of Black Folk,
“The Black Man Brings His Gifts,” Black Reconstruction of Democracy in America, Black
Folk, Then and Now, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept
and The World and Africa, Du Bois put forward concepts of race that were not
biologically based, but predicated on political, social, historical, and cultural “common”
characteristics and experiences shared by continental and diasporan Africans. (Rabaka
2009)

- Du Bois ‘s theoretical standpoint can be roughly characterised as involving three main

critical thrusts , firstly a racial theory that criticises dominant white racial narratives ,
secondly a theory of colonialism that criticised colonial narratives , thirdly a theory of
capitalism critical of capitalist society ( Awkward 2000) .
2.1.2 Theory of Cultural Oppression

-Undergirding every oppressive structure is cultural exclusion. While the relative

importance of structure and culture in social change can be argued, it is generally the case
that structural oppression is legitimated and facilitated by specific cultural moves—historical
cultural exclusion in particular. In this case, African Americans have been systematically
excluded from American history, and they have been deprived of their own African
history. History plays an important part in legitimating our social structures; in this way,
history functions as ideology. No one living has a personal memory of why we created
the institutions that we have. So, for example, why does the government function the way it
does in the United States? No one personally knows; instead, we have a historical account or
story of how and why it came about because we weren’t there, this history takes on
objective qualities and feels like a fact, and this facticity legitimates our institutions and
social arrangements unquestionably (Allan 2013; 252).

-Du Bois, however, holds out the possibility of a scientific history. This kind of history would
be guided by ethical standards in research and interpretation, and the record of human action
would be written with accuracy and faithfulness of detail. Du Bois envisions this history as
acting like a guidepost and measuring rod for national conduct. Du Bois (1935/1996c)
presents this formulation of history as a choice: We can either use history “for our pleasure
and amusement, for inflating our national ego,” or we can use it as a moral guide and
handbook for future generations (p. 440). . Du Bois claimed in his classic essay, “The Study
of Negro Problems” (1898), that the omission of persons of African descent from the realm of
social scientific study, and their relegation and reduction to paradigms par excellence of
pathology when they are studied, robs all “true lovers of humanity” who “hold higher the
pure ideals of science” of the rigorous and robust practice of a truly human science (p. 23)
(Rabaka 2009).

-Another key concept outlined by Du Bois is Representation which is the symbolic practice
through which meaning is given to the world around us. It involves the production and
consumption of cultural items and is a major site of conflict, negotiation, and potential
oppression. (Allan 2013). Cultural domination through representation implies that the
predominantly white media for instance do not truly represent African Americans. As Du
Bois (1920/1996) says,
 “The whites obviously seldom picture brown and yellow folk, but for five hundred
centuries they have exhausted every ingenuity of trick, of ridicule and caricature on
black folk” (pp. 59–60).

-The effect of such representation is cultural and psychological: The disenfranchised

read the representations and may become ashamed of their own image. Du Bois gives an
example from his own work at The Crisis (the official publication of the NAACP). The Crisis
put a picture of a black person on the cover of the magazine. When the readers saw the
representation, they perceived it (or consumed it) as

“the caricature that white folks intend when they make a black face.” Du Bois
queried some of his office staff about the reaction. They said the problem wasn’t that
the person was black; the problem was that the person was too black. To this Du Bois
replied, “Nonsense! Do white people complain because their pictures are too white?”
(Du Bois 1920/1996b, p. 60).

In cultural oppression, then, the dominant group represents those who are subjugated in
such a way that negative connotative meanings and myths are produced. This complex
layering of ideological meanings is why members of a disenfranchised group can
simultaneously be proud and ashamed of their heritage. Here is a case in point: The black
office colleagues to whom Du Bois refers can be proud of being black but at the same time
feel that an image is too black (Allan 2013)

- In addition to history and misrepresentation, the cultural representation of oppression

consists of being defined as a problem, that is representations of minority groups which
focus on its shortcomings, and these images come to dominate the general culture as
stereotypes.(Allan 2013) For instance Du Bois argues

While sociologists gleefully count his bastards and his prostitutes, the very soul of the
toiling, sweating black man is darkened by the shadow of a vast despair. Men call the
shadow prejudice, and learnedly explain it as the natural defense of culture against
barbarism, learning against ignorance, purity against crime, the “higher” against the
“lower” races. To which the Negro cries Amen! (Du Bois, 1903/1996d, p. 105)

-In this quote Du Bois is saying that the black person agrees with this cultural justification of
oppression. Here we can see one of the insidious ways in which cultural justifications can
work. It presents us with an apparent truth that once we agree to, can reflexively destroy us.
Here’s how this bit of cultural logic works. The learned person says that discrimination and
prejudice are necessary because they are needed to demarcate the boundaries between
civilized and uncivilized, knowledge and ignorance, morality and sin, right and wrong. We
agree that we should be prejudiced against sin and evil, and against uncivilized and barbarous
behavior, and we are, in a very concrete manner. For example, we are prejudiced against
allowing a criminal into our home. We thus agree that prejudice is a good thing. Once we
agree with the general thesis, it can then be more easily turned specifically against us (Allan
2013).

-Du Bois (1903/1996d) says that the Negro stands “helpless, dismayed, and well-nigh
speechless” before the “nameless prejudice” that becomes expressed in “the all-pervading
desire to inculcate disdain for everything black” (p. 103). In Darkwater, Du Bois
(1920/1996a) argues for “theory of human culture” (p. 505) that has “worked itself through
warp and woof of our daily thought” (p. 505). For instance we use the term white to
analogously refer to everything that is good, pure, and decent. The term black is likewise
reserved for things or people who are despicable, who are ignorant, and who instil fear. There
is thus a moral, default assumption in back of these terms that automatically includes the
cultural identities of white and black. People are thus involved in an unconscious movement
from general to specific is unconsciously applied. The cultural default is simply there,
waiting to swallow up the identities and individuals that lie in its path. (Allan 2013)

-Du Bois‘central thought is that all structural oppression must be accompanied by

cultural oppression. There are several mechanisms of cultural suppression which include
denial of history, controlling representation, and the use of stereotypes and default
assumptions. As a result of cultural suppression, minorities like African Americans have a
double consciousness. They are aware of themselves from their group’s point of view, which
is positive, and they are conscious of their identity from the oppressor’s position, which is
negative (Allan 2013).

The Theory of Double Consciousness

- W.E.B. Du Bois, early on in his life (1885-1910), saw the historical situation of the African
living in America as leading to a double-consciousness, which is a sense of “two-ness,” or
feeling among African Americans of seeing and measuring themselves through others’ eyes
(Ritzer and Stepnisky 2014). Du Bois himself notes the following
 We are Americans, not only by birth and by citizenship, but by our political ideals, our
language, and our religion. Farther than that our Americanism does not go. At that
point we are Negroes, members of a vast historic race that from the very dawn of
creation has slept, but half awakens in the dark forests of its African fatherland. We
are the first fruits of this new nation, the harbinger of that black tomorrow which is yet
destined to soften the whiteness of the Teutonic today. We are that people whose subtle
sense of song has given America its only American music, its only American fairy tales,
its only touch of pathos and humor amid its money-getting plutocracy. As such, it is our
duty to conserve our physical powers, our intellectual endowments, and our spiritual
ideals; as a race we must strive by race organization, by race solidarity, by race unity to
the realization of that broader humanity which freely recognizes differences in men, but
sternly deprecates inequality in their opportunities of development (Du Bois, 1971
[1897]: 179-183).

-Du Bois utilized the idea of race as a substance both biological and spiritual (the “souls” of
black folk) to inscribe black folk in a temporal community, black nation, defined by its
“doubleness,” American and Negro. The former characterized by its civilization and
“enlightenment” ethos, the latter by its emotionalism and spiritualism. In other words,
whites (the Teuton nation) were characterized by their rationality and temperance, and blacks,
southern blacks, were characterized by their emotionalism, spiritualism, and musical style.
(Macombe 2009)

- Du Bois also notes that

After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the
Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second sight in this
American world,—a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets
him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation,
this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the
eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in
amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro; two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body,
whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder. The history of the
American Negro is the history of this strife,—this longing to attain self-conscious
manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he
 wishes neither of the older selves to be lost. He would not Africanize America, for
America has too much to teach the world and Africa. He would not bleach his
Negro soul in a flood of white Americanism, for he knows that Negro blood has a
message for the world. He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a
Negro and an American, without being cursed and spit upon by his fellows, without
having the doors of Opportunity closed roughly in his face (Du Bois, 1995 [1903]:
43-47).

-Du Bois in the above quote employs spiritual language the veil of which he speaks is the
birth caul. In some births, the inner foetal membrane tissue doesn’t rupture and it covers the
head at delivery. This “caul” appears in about 1 in 1,000 births. Due to its rarity, some
traditional cultures consider such a birth spiritually significant and the caul is kept for good
luck. The same is true of the seventh son reference. The seventh son is considered to have
special powers, and references to such are to be found in many folk and blues songs as well
as in the Bible. The “second sight” is a reference to clairvoyant or prophetic vision. Thus, Du
Bois is saying that because of their experiential position, African Americans are gifted
with special insight a prophetic vision into the “American World.” They see themselves not
simply as they are; they also see their position from the perspective of the “other world”
, which is the white social world around them. In other words, blacks and other oppressed
groups have a particular point of view of society that allows them to see certain truths
about the social system that escape others. This idea of critical consciousness goes back to
Marx. Marxian philosophy argues that only those on the outside of an oppressive system can
understand its true workings; it is difficult to critically and reflexively understand a
system if you accept its legitimation. In other words, capitalists and those who benefit from
capitalism by definition believe in capitalism. It is difficult for a capitalist to understand the
oppressive workings of capitalism because in doing so the person would be condemning
himself or herself (Allan 2013).

- According to Du Bois, African Americans have a subjective awareness that comes from
their particular group status (being black and all that that entails), and they have a second
awareness based on their general status group (being an American). What this means is that
people in disenfranchised groups see themselves from two perspectives. Illustrating this
concept using Cooley’s notion of the looking-glass self we notice that in Cooley’s theory, the
sense of one’s self is derived from the perceptions of others. There are three phases in
Cooley’s scheme. First, we imagine what we look like to other people; we then imagine their
judgment of that appearance; and finally, we react emotionally with either pride or shame to
that judgment. Cooley didn’t say we actually perceive how others see and judge us; rather,
we imagine their perceptions and judgments. However, this imagination is not based on pure
speculation. It is based on social concepts of ways to look (cultural images); ways to
behave (scripts); and ways we anticipate others will behave, based on their social category
(expectations). In this way, Du Bois argues that African Americans internalized the cultural
images produced through the ruling, white culture. They also internalize their own group-
specific culture. Blacks thus see themselves from at least two different and at times
contradictory perspectives. We can thus see in Du Bois’ work a general theory of cultural
oppression. That is, every group that is oppressed structurally (economically and politically)
will be oppressed culturally (Allan 2013)

-The basic method is as he outlines is summarised by Allan (2013)

1. Define and label the group in general as a problem,

2. Emphasize and stereotype the group’s shortcomings
3. define them as intrinsic to the group,
4. Employ cultural mechanisms (such as misrepresentation and default assumptions) so
the negative attributes are taken for granted, and systematically exclude the group
from the grand narrative histories of the larger collective.

Theory of Race and Capitalism

-Allan (2013) argues that Du Bois asees the social system working in a very Marxian way.
Like Marx, he argues that the economic system is vitally important to society and for
understanding history. Du Bois (1920/1996a) says that “history is economic history; living is
earning a living” (p. 500). He also understands the expansion to global capitalism in
Marxian, world systems terms. Capitalism is inherently expansive. Once limited to a few
national borders, it gradually spread to a worldwide economic system. One of the things this
implies is that exploitation can be exported. Du Bois argues that

Thus the world market most wildly and desperately sought today is the market where
labor is cheapest and most helpless and profit is most abundant. This labor is kept
cheap and helpless because the white world despises “darkies.” (Du Bois,
1920/1996a, p. 507)
- Capitalism requires a ready workforce that can be exploited. Goods must be made for less
than their market value, and one of the prime ways to decrease costs and increase profits is by
cutting labor costs. In national capitalism, this level of exploitation is limited to the confines
of the state itself. Consequently, as the national economy expands and the living wage
increases, the level of profit goes down. This proportional increase in income would lower
profit margins. However, with global capitalism, exploitation can be exported. Du Bois
(1920/1996a) argues that this expansion of exploitation is due to increasing levels of
“education, political power, and increased knowledge of the technique and meaning of the
industrial process” (p. 504). There are, according to Marx and Du Bois, certain inevitable
“trickledown” effects of capitalism. As industrial technologies become more and more
sophisticated, better-educated workers are needed

-Du Bois (1920/1996a) argues that the reality of those nations is one of color:

“There is a chance for exploitation on an immense scale for inordinate profit, not simply to
the very rich, but to the middle class and to the laborers. This chance lies in the exploitation
of darker peoples”(pp. 504–505).

These are “dark lands,” ripe for exploitation, “with only one test of success,—dividends!” (p.
505). In other words, middle-class wages in advanced industrialized nations are based on
there being racial groups for .exploitation. Du Bois thus sees race as a tool of capitalism.
While Du Bois perceives distinct differences between blacks and whites that can be
characterized in spiritual terms (the souls of black and white folk), he also argues that the
color line is socially constructed and politically meaningful. The really interesting feature of
Du Bois’ perspective here is that he understands that both black and white social
identities are constructed.