DuBois As an Elitist: Superior and Separate

By JMB

For Literary Nonfiction, East TN State U, Fall 2003

[ JMB is an undergraduate interdisciplinary studies major at ETSU and a native of Pennsylvania. ]

W.E.B. DuBois stands in American History as a gifted author and civil rights leader. During his lifetime, 1868-1963, DuBois, helped to found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and became the first African-American to receive a Harvard Doctorate. He also served as editor of The Crisis, the monthly magazine of the NAACP.

DuBois, according to David Levering Lewis, author of W.E.B. DuBois, Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, “ [gave the message of Karl Marx] to all Africans, as to the rest of the less developed world, [which] was that the market economy perfected in northern Europe always made the weak weaker – and most of the strong weaker.” (8) As a Marxist, DuBois received the Lenin Peace Prize and also for a time had his birthday recognized as national holiday in China. Lewis tells that DuBois at the time of his death was considered the “Father of Pan-Africa [and a] Moses to the people of Ghana”(3).

In the United States, however, DuBois is perhaps best known for his book, The Souls of Black Folk, published in 1903, which continues to be seen on bookstore shelves today. Playthell Benjamin, in his book Reconsidering the Souls of Black Folk, calls the “Souls of Black Folk, DuBois’ ‘shot heard around the world’, and once having taken the battlefield he never for one moment removed his intellectual armor for the next 60 years”(157). He fought for the rest of his life for his intellectual ideals. His beliefs, in education for only the gifted few and a separate African-American society further supported elitism rather than equality.

Merriam-Webster Online defines elite as, “the best of a class” and “the socially superior part of a society.” In his writings and his actions, W.E.B. DuBois illuminates both of these definitions. He spent his life demonstrating to the world his intellectual superiority through ideological sparring with many famous and not so famous people.

The seeds of these ideas were planted initially by an experience during his childhood years, which he tells in The Souls of Black Folk, when a white girl shuns an offer of a card from DuBois during a class exchange. DuBois describes the experience in this manner:

The exchange was merry, till one girl, a tall newcomer, refused my card, --- and refused it peremptorily, with a glance. Then it dawned upon me with a certain suddenness that I was different form the others; or like, mayhap, in heart and life and longing, but shout out from their world by a vast veil. I had thereafter no desire to tear down that veil to creep through, I held all beyond it in common contempt, and lived above it in a region of blue sky and great wandering shadows. (4)

DuBois knew from that point on that he had no real desire to be in the white world.

DuBois shows himself to be “the best” through his highbrow, formal writing in The Souls of Black Folk. For DuBois, it is important for everyone to know that he is better than most of the White race. Educated at Fisk, Harvard and the University of Berlin, DuBois wanted to make sure people knew of his classical education. He demonstrates further superiority through his use of illusions such as the legend of Atlalanta when discussing the city of Atlanta. DuBois relates how Atlalanta’s suitor caught her by laying out golden apples, which due to her greediness she stopped to pick up. DuBois says not to let the city of Atlanta lead the South to focus on material prosperity. The completion of this analogy is found in his final words of the chapter, “And they say that yon gray mist is the tunic of Atlanta pausing over her golden apples. Fly, my maiden, fly, for yonder comes Hippomenes!”(73). Thus he separates himself from the rest of his strata through the use of language and culture. The combination of a quote and a line of music at the beginning of each chapter further demonstrate DuBois’s range of knowledge. He quotes such famous poets as Byron, Browning and Tennyson and places them along side the music of African-American Spirituals.

In The Souls of Black Folk, in this elitist language, DuBois emphasizes that certain people are designed for certain things: “…teach the workers to work and the thinkers to think; make carpenters of carpenters; and philosophers of philosophers, fops of fools,”(72). Everyone has a place and is designed for something different. DuBois is emphasizing that for those few who needed higher education; it should be readily available and accessible. After all, “Why not here, and perhaps elsewhere, plant deeply and for all time centers of learning and living, colleges that would yearly send into the life of the South a few white men and a few black men of broad culture, catholic tolerance, and trained ability, …”(71) DuBois believed that college would give these few good men these qualities such that they would be able to deal with the problem of race in a decent manner.

When DuBois poses his argument to Booker T. Washington for higher education, it is an argument for “the education of youth according to ability” (45). He is not an advocate of college for everyone, but for the best and the brightest men. DuBois does not include women as being able to be a part of the intellectual class. The best and the brightest men are the ones who need to make the decisions and guide the rest. Therefore, DuBois is not against Washington’s schools for industrial education, but rather is arguing against limiting the education of those men who are capable of higher learning. The idea that some can do more than others while others do less cannot be ignored.

DuBois further states in The Souls of Black Folk, “And when, by proscription and prejudice, these same Negroes are classed with and treated like the lowest of their people simply because they are Negroes, such a policy, [the policy of treating all Negroes alike], not only discourages thrift and intelligence but puts a direct premium on the very things you, [the White race] complain of, --- inefficiency and crime”(152). DuBois is saying to white people that by treating Negroes all the same that they, the white race, are discouraging the Negroes from bettering themselves. This thought also illustrates how DuBois thinks that certain people are better than others; those Negroes who are intellectuals must be treated better than the lower criminal classes. They are not equals.

DuBois knew from that point on that he had no real desire to be in the white world. Two years after the publication of The Souls of Black Folk, DuBois further demonstrates his belief by holding an invitation only conference, for the purpose of gathering African-American intellectuals together to discuss policy issues. According to literary critic, Geoff Sadler, “... [DuBois] praises the elite of university graduates from a people thought incapable of learning, to which ‘Talented Tenth’ he looks for future leadership.” In DuBois’s eyes, approximately a tenth of the population forms the intellectual class. From this group, he selected his invitees for the Niagara Conference. This Niagara Conference held in July, 1905 was held to “organize intelligent and honest Negroes”, according to Crouch and Benjamin (153). It can be observed that DuBois selected only those that he felt worthy of his company and could be considered in his class. Initially, from this conference comes from the formation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). However, this conference begins DuBois’s descent into further elitism and finally into total separatism. DuBois desired to be in his own superior class; not only did he not want anything to do with the White race but he would gradually separate himself from other African-Americans who did not support his ideas.

Playthell Benjamin and Stanley Crouch write that later on, “DuBois would speak of the fact that he did not allow white acquaintances to pursue him nor did he seek them out. He also refused the weekend invitations of H.G. Wells and Henry James” (110-111). David Levering Lewis in W.E.B. DuBois Biography of Race 1868-1919 states that according to DuBois, “Woodrow Wilson due to his birth and education,” (512) was incapable of dealing with the race question. This behavior illustrates how DuBois sees himself as socially superior or rather elite as a black intellectual. He had no time for white people. DuBois’ ideas of elitist separatism grew even further. He wanted a civilization composed of his own superior class. This is what makes him elitist, his desire to separate himself because he saw himself as better than others.

However, DuBois would also have continued “ideological battles” as described by Playthell Benjamin (156) within his own race. Among those he debated would be young Afro-American Marxists, A. Phillip Randolph and Chandler Owen, along with Richard B. Moore and Cyril Briggs, who were West Indian Marxist Intellectuals. He had conflicts with the African Blood Brotherhood, the liberal Constitutionalists of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) and the black nationalists of Garvey’s Universal Negro Improvement Association. Eventually these conflicts would lead to a “forced parting of the ways with the NAACP and a knockdown drag-out brawl with Marcus Garvey, Jamaican immigrant who built a mass movement based on Pan-African Nationalism in post World War I America,” (156).

Ironically enough it was the segregation of African Americans that he had fought against for so long that led to his disassociation with the NAACP. He had fought for desegregation of American society and now in the 1930’s felt that African-Americans needed to separate themselves from whites and build their own society. Eventually disillusioned with American society, DuBois would move to Ghana where died as an exiled intellectual elitist.

To DuBois, his intellectual ideals and fight for justice for the Afro-American people was more important than anything. It is clear from his intellectual debates with those both inside and outside his race, that friendship did not exist in DuBois’s life only his struggle to achieve the ideal. This is what made him an elitist. DuBois through his writing and education demonstrated himself to be the best, and then through exclusionary actions that he only wanted to be associated with superior society. For him, superior society was his own ideal.

Works Cited

Crouch, Stanley and Playthell Benjamin. Reconsidering The Souls of Black Folk.

Philadelphia: Running Press, 2002.

DuBois, W.E.B. The Souls of Black Folk.

New York: Viking Penguin, 1996.

Lewis, David Levering. W.E.B. DuBois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919.

New York: Henry Holt and Company, Inc., 1993.

Merriam-Webster Dictionary, http://www.m-w.com, 2003.

Sadler, Geoff. “Criticism about William Edward Burghardt DuBois (1868-1963).”

Reference Guide to American Literature, 3rd ed., Ed. Jim Kamp.

St. James Press, 1994.