Power, Inequality, and Conflict: Du Bois and Collins
This paper examines the theme of power, inequality, and conflict in the American experience through the theoretical lenses of W. E. B. Du Bois and Patricia Hill Collins. Drawing primarily on Collins's Black Feminist Thought (1990), the paper traces how African American women have resisted oppression through self-reliance, community organizing, and political action. It evaluates the strengths and weaknesses of Collins's approach—her bold, multi-angled scholarship that couples subjective lived experience with objective analysis—and contrasts it with Du Bois's more cautious academic treatment. The paper argues that Collins offers the most powerful framework for understanding these themes because she centers the voices of the marginalized and demands that readers engage with the lived realities of Black womanhood in America.
- Introduction: The American Dream and Its Contradictions: Du Bois and Collins introduced as competing frameworks
- Collins and the Politics of Empowerment: Collins centers marginalized voices to define power
- Self-Reliance, Identity, and Black Feminist Thought: Stewart's call for Black women's self-determination
- Inequality, Jim Crow, and Structural Oppression: Plessy v. Ferguson and systemic racial inequality
- Strengths of Collins's Approach: Bold voice, layered theory, and lived experience
- Weaknesses and Limitations: Breadth of topics can overwhelm the reader
- Conclusion: Why Collins Is Most Helpful: Collins illuminates power through comprehensive analysis
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds an abstract theoretical comparison in concrete historical examples—Jim Crow laws, Plessy v. Ferguson, Hollywood stereotypes—giving the argument tangible weight.
- It maintains a clear evaluative thread throughout, consistently returning to the question of which theorist best illuminates the theme, which gives the essay focus and direction.
- The paper honestly acknowledges Collins's weakness (breadth that can overwhelm) before reframing it as a minor flaw, demonstrating balanced critical thinking rather than one-sided advocacy.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses comparative theoretical analysis: it does not simply summarize two thinkers but places them in direct dialogue, measuring each against the same evaluative standard (usefulness for understanding power, inequality, and conflict). This technique—setting up criteria, then applying them to competing frameworks—is a hallmark of undergraduate social theory writing.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens by introducing both theorists and stating a clear thesis favoring Collins. It then builds the case section by section: establishing Collins's core project, illustrating it with Stewart's call for self-reliance, grounding it in structural history (Jim Crow), and finally conducting an explicit strengths-and-weaknesses evaluation. The conclusion synthesizes the argument and ends with a forward-looking claim about the reader's own transformation—a rhetorically effective closing move.
Introduction: The American Dream and Its Contradictions
The two theorists used in this paper to explore the theme of power, inequality, and conflict are W. E. B. Du Bois and Patricia Hill Collins. This theme gets to the heart of the struggle within the American experience. The great attraction of the American Dream has always been that people are created equal and are endowed with a natural right to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. For many minorities and marginalized persons in America, however, the Dream has a way of turning into a nightmare. Whether because of segregation, Jim Crow laws, gender pay gaps, or all manner of harassment—both sexual and racial—the theme of power, inequality, and conflict has been a constant one throughout American history.
While Du Bois explores this theme in "The Conservation of Races," it is Patricia Hill Collins who is most helpful in providing an understanding of it. That is because Collins discusses the theme from the standpoint of the politics of empowerment. Du Bois discusses it more from an academic standpoint—that is, the need for the American Negro to abandon his own "slavish" ways and embrace the realization that he has something unique and valuable to offer to the American public. Du Bois appears to accept the law of segregation insofar as he embraces the differences among the races. Collins firmly places the experiences of African American women in the limelight to show how power, inequality, and conflict can best be understood from the perspective of those who have long had to deal with the struggle to be heard. Collins aims to "reconcile subjectivity and objectivity in producing scholarship" so as to create a "dialogue among people who have been silenced" (p. ix). By creating that dialogue, she illuminates the theme in a powerful way. This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of her approach and explains why hers is most helpful in understanding the theme of power, inequality, and conflict.
Collins and the Politics of Empowerment
What Collins (1990) shows is that there is a power struggle within the established order of American society. Others have likewise pointed this out. Angela Davis, for instance, has shown that America's power structure is based on racist principles and that the American justice system is essentially an unjust means of controlling and re-enslaving the African American. Collins follows suit and adopts the method of the socio-political activist to draw attention to the struggles of the oppressed and the marginalized, as it is through their eyes that one can best understand what the idea of power really means. One does not truly begin to understand something until it is denied to them. Most readers who grow up benefitting from some form of privilege cannot fully understand the power they hold—which is why they must explore this concept through the lived and shared experiences of the disenfranchised.
Collins allows the reader to do just that, which is why her approach is so powerful. Her main strength is her ability to put the reader in the shoes of African American women so that the reader can see the world from a new, wholly unique perspective and begin to understand what a life can feel like without opportunity, without privilege, and without a sense of fairness.
Self-Reliance, Identity, and Black Feminist Thought
One of the main themes of American Transcendentalism was self-reliance—Ralph Waldo Emerson's defining idea, one he wrote about at length. Collins begins her book Black Feminist Thought by examining the teachings of a Black feminist who called on African American women to create their own sense of self-reliance. Collins notes that Maria Stewart "urged Black women to forge self definitions of self reliance and independence" because there were too many "negative images of Black womanhood" in her own day. Something had to be done to make Black women feel more empowered, and no one could do it for them—they had to do it on their own. That is why Stewart was so vociferous in her call for them to take control of their own lives and begin to create an authentic identity for themselves (p. 1).
Stewart's complaint was not unique. In fact, negative images of African Americans had abounded following the end of slavery. Until The Negro Soldier debuted in cinemas during World War II, images of African Americans had largely been stereotypical, silly, and condescending: Hollywood routinely depicted African Americans as non-threatening, always "eating watermelons, loafing, singing and dancing" (German, 2017, p. 58). By encouraging African American women to band together—much as Du Bois urges African American men to band together in "The Conservation of Races"—Stewart was able to become a voice for feminism, for community, for solidarity, and for "Black women's activism and self-determination" (Collins, 1990, p. 2).
Collins thus shows how power could be gained by the marginalized and oppressed through the application of the principle of self-reliance. This principle is not well explained by Du Bois, and as a result the concept of power never feels fully explored in his work. Collins, on the other hand, gets right to the heart of the matter: Stewart called for Black womanhood to stand up, come together, and empower itself by embracing the spirit of self-determination. This was where the essence of power could be found.
Conclusion: Why Collins Is Most Helpful
For these reasons, Collins is the most helpful theorist for understanding the theme of power, inequality, and conflict. She presents the issues in clear and distinct ways that are accessible and comprehensible, rooted in actual examples of lived experience. She uses the struggle to create and foster an identity of Black womanhood as one lens through which to explore the issues. She uses the politics of empowerment as another. She is never without resources and is under no obligation to confine her thesis to a predetermined word count. Indeed, the more words, examples, theories, and facts she provides, the more the theme is illuminated—until, by the end of the book, it stands out like a bright light from which there is no escape no matter where one looks.
That is what makes her approach so effective. It is powerful and direct enough to begin enlightening every other aspect of one's thinking. The reader cannot simply return to life as usual without first considering how that life might interact with, impact, or be impacted by Black feminist thought, and how it participates in the broader construction of power, inequality, and conflict in America. Whatever level of privilege or lack of privilege one experiences, Collins's theoretical orientation offers more food for thought than one might have imagined possible—placing the reader in the shoes of a marginalized group in order to truly understand what is meant by power, inequality, and conflict.
References
Collins, P. H. (1990). Black Feminist Thought. Psychology Press.
Davis, A. (2012). The Meaning of Freedom. City Lights Books.
German, K. M. (2017). Promises of Citizenship: Film Recruitment of African Americans in World War II. University Press of Mississippi.
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