Scholars look at DuBois' legacy

The two-day conference honoring the work of W.E.B. DuBois concluded Wednesday with a discussion of the differing perceptions through which society has viewed African Americans throughout history. The session -- entitled "Philosophy" -- was attended by about 200 people and focused on DuBois' famous 1898 paper "The Study of Negro Problems," which dealt with black communities in the Philadelphia area. While DuBois' sociological study marked its centennial in 1998, Louis Gordon, a Brown University professor of African-American Studies, noted the modern relevance of DuBois' observation of the "persisting problem of the color line." "DuBois' analysis of the color line has expanded to include divisions between genders, classes, religions, as well as races, in the 20th century," Gordon said. Confronted with a "Promethean effort" to change society's perceptions of African Americans, DuBois was, according to Gordon, "set up to fail." DuBois had to "do a dance" around a constrained socio-political environment dominated by racist rhetoric, Haverford College Philosophy Professor Lucius Outlaw remarked. During the period, many people expressed the need to control the "black plague before it could infect the healthy stock of white folk in Philadelphia." Gordon praised DuBois' criticism of a view at that time which suggested that there were an "African-American problem" -- an inborn, psychological condition of the race. Dubois' advocated a theory that instead attributed such statements not to innate African-American beliefs but to white supremacist subjectivity. DuBois concluded, according to Outlaw, that the "evolutionary development" of the African-American community was hindered not by "the nature of the black race, but by conditions and structures surrounding blacks." DuBois attempted to overturn racial prejudices "inimical to the social evolution of the race," Outlaw said, by proposing that the pervading problems in the black community resulted from their oppression and silenced political voice. The political nihilism which spread throughout the 19th century African-American population came as a result of politicians' failure to represent their needs, according to Gordon. Abandoning their initial enthusiasm and faith in radical social change, many African Americans asked, "Why bother?" Gordon also cited the implementation of Jim Crow laws as a further degradation of African-American social conditions, bringing their "selfhood in conflict with humanhood." DuBois' words have persisted for a century because of a necessity to "look back to DuBois to know where we are going," Penn Social Science Professor Elijah Anderson said. "The color line is still a problem," though "ever more complexified by general issues of inequality" such as joblessness, alienation and other social pathologies "blamed on the victims rather than the society," Anderson said.