Reminders & More Lecture Notes

REMINDERS: Be sure to check out the previous two blog posts for the "game plan" for the rest of the semester, lecture notes on Veblen, and the description of the family activity on Chapter 11, where you should post you findings next week. Since I did not get through DuBois this morning, I am going to post the remainder of those lecture notes. And tomorrow I may add my notes on Chapter 13 as well, so I can keep pace with the "game plan."
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Nature of Society, Humans, and Change

A. The authors note that DuBois exposed HISTORY AS IDEOLOGY -- how historians had unanimously argued that Blacks were responsible for the failure of Reconstruction and their subsequent inferior status. Factually, DuBois argues that it was the other way around, as he documents in "Black REconstruction in America" (although the authors give none of the factual detail that DuBois brought out to counter this consensus view).

B. DuBois did not believe that human nature was inherently good or bad, but malleable. Similarly, he did not see racial prejudice as ineradicable. He makes an interesting point about this as regards the newly freed slaves. See top p. 300.

C. He did not see progress on the racial front or otherwise as inevitable. Note what the authors say about DuBois's optimism. See bottom paragraph, p. 300.

Class, Gender, Race

A. DuBois clearly saw class and race as intertwined. He makes an interesting point about how class seems to trump race when you're talking about the black middle class. Nonetheless, he felt (like himself) that the black middle class (what he sometimes called "the talented tenth") had an obligation to try to uplift the poor Black masses.

B. He "argued that no scientific definition of race is possible. Physical differences fade into each other almost imperceptibly." (p. 302) Talks about the "race construct" -- what I would call the social construction or definition of race.

1. In this context, DuBois contended that racial discrimination preceded prejudice and could reinforce it.

C. DuBois recognized the uplift of women as the next great movement (after racial equality, that is). And he spoke forcefully on issues of suffrage and education for women. He clearly was in the minority on this issue compared to other sociological theorists we've studied.

Other Theories and Theorists

A. The authors make an interesting point with respect to DuBois's take on William Graham Sumner's Social Darwinism. See middle paragraph, p. 304.

B. And in commenting on DuBois's drift toward Marxism, they quote from a letter Karl Marx wrote to Abraham Lincoln in 1865. See bottom p. 304. (let me say, that although some of Marx's predictions may have been way off, this one certainly was not.)

Critique and Conclusions & Final Thoughts

A. They acknowledge his potential to have been a great national leader, if he had been white (as Gunnar Myrdal observed). His politics, especially his sympathy for communism, also marginalized him.

B. And he clearly was a committed scholar. He clearly belongs squarely in the tradition of CRITICAL THEORY.
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That's all for now. I probably will be adding some more notes on Chapter 13 tomorrow.