W.E.B. Du Bois's vision for African American uplift and disagreement with Booker T. Washington

WEB Du Bois

The contrast between the thought of WEB Du Bois and that of his predecessor Booker T. Washington is readily apparent in the titles of the best-known works by the two men. Washington's thinking is laid out in his book Up From Slavery, and the title indicates not only an autobiography, but one which is unapologetic in the credence it lends to the typical American capitalist narrative of "rising" in the world. By contrast WEB Du Bois offers his trenchant critique of Washington in a work entitled The Souls of Black Folk: the very title indicates that we are meant to be closely considering not materialistic but spiritual values in wondering how the African-American population would make their way in the United States after the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment and into Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the rest. It is worth considering closely, though, how Du Bois offers an explicit critique of Booker T. Washington, by examining his account of the appeal of Washington's thought, the limitations of it, and ultimately the prescriptions which Du Bois hopes to offer in its place.

Du Bois offers his most pointed and deliberate criticisms of Booker T. Washington in Chapters 3 through 6 of The Souls of Black Folk, which are the portions of the book that deal explicitly with the subject of education for African-Americans. To a large degree, the biggest difference in ideas between the two men comes in terms of outlining a philosophy of education. Yet Du Bois is careful to contextualize Booker T. Washington in terms which the title of his own book seems to emphasize, insisting on spiritual values beyond the cash value of social advancement and hard work. As he notes at the outset of his discussion of Washington, WEB Du Bois links Washington's idea with the predominantly materialistic and commercial obsessions of America's Gilded Age:

Washington came, with a simple definite programme, at the psychological moment when the nation was a little ashamed of having bestowed so much sentiment on Negroes, and was concentrating its energies on Dollars. (Du Bois, 30)

In some sense, Du Bois seems to be hinting here that Booker T. Washington was limited by his willingness to assimilate to the materialistic concerns of white American society at the time when he was writing: if the white robber barons of the 1870s and 1880s are people who were "concentrating [their] energies on Dollars," to a certain degree Du Bois suggests that this profoundly unspiritual obsession is what makes Washington's system of thought a bad compromise. Du Bois thinks Washington's system finds its appeal by mirroring, in a submissive way, the predominant concerns of white America at the time of his writing, without offering any critique of those concerns.

One way in which Du Bois manages to subvert Washington's thought, though, is by historicizing it: he is careful to contrast Washington with other intellectual leaders in ages past, ranging from slave-revolt leaders like Nat Turner to the eloquent abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Du Bois notes that Douglass in particular was working toward a specific political goal -- the eradication of slavery in the American South -- but that he ultimately looked forward to "ultimate assimilation through self-assertion, and on no other terms" (Du Bois 35). This lends a spiritual cast to Douglass's thinking, in Du Bois's account -- in some sense, this idealistic goal is one that could be thought good for "the souls of black folk." By contrast the program put forward by Booker T. Washington seems to abandon the high ideals of the abolitionist movement in favor of assimilating with the "root, hog, or die" ethic of America's Gilded Age. As Du Bois describes it in Chapter 3:

This is an age of unusual economic development, and Mr. Washington's programme naturally takes an economic cast, becoming a gospel of Work and Money to such an extent as apparently almost completely to overshadow the higher aims of life. Moreover, this is an age when the more advanced races are coming in closer contact with the less developed races, and the race-feeling is therefore intensified; and Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races. (Du Bois, 36)

This is the heart of Du Bois's critique of Washington, simply put. Washington's insistence that the education of black Americans focus on "common-school and industrial training" (37) -- rather than the sort of education that might be offered at Harvard or Yale in the same period -- is not merely small-minded in its economics, but it accepts the limitations imposed on African-Americans by tacitly conceding that the children of ex-slaves are somehow not good enough for an Ivy League course of study.