This post is a collection of the quotes I found most important from W.E.B. Du Bois’ famous 1898 essay “The Study of the Negro Problems”. Like all my posts, this is intended for my own benefit, but if it is helpful for anyone else, that would make me happy 🙂
"The Study of the Negro Problems" (1898)
by W.E.B. Du Bois
This paper, written in 1898, argues for the necessity of studying race relations in the U.S. as a science and also for a certain structure within the science. Underlying all his claims is the emphasis that race relations in the U.S. will need a strong commitment to the understanding of truth, to understand the realities of our world.
The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 1898.
Sections I found particularly Important:
Definition, ‘Social Problem’: “A social problem is the failure of an organized social group to realize its group ideals, through the inability to adapt a certain desired line of action to given conditions of life.” (2)
Social Problems Evolve & Are Complex: “A social problem is ever a relation between conditions and action, and as conditions and actions vary and change from group to group from time to time and from palace to place, so social problems change, develop and grow. Consequently, through we ordinarily speak of the Negro problem as though it were one unchanged question, students must recognize the obvious facts that this problem, like others, has had a long historical development, has changed with the growth and evolution of the nation; moreover, that it is not one problem, but rather a plexus of social problems, some new, some old, some simple, some complex; and these problems have their one bond of unity in the act that they group themselves about those Africans whom two centuries of slave-trading brought into the land.” (3)
Black People Have Many Different Perspectives: There’s a huge chunk of writing pages 4 – 5 that really do a good job describing the history of WHY there’s such a wide variety of black opinions on the ‘same issue’… well it’s because there’s such a wide range of experiences. In 1898, it was 8 million black people WEB Du Bois is saying “How can you generalize!?” to. Same question applies today to the 13% of the US!
The Problems Are Not Going Away: “So far as the Negro race is concerned, the Civil War simply left us face to face with the same sort of problems of social condition and caste which were beginning to face the nation a century ago. It is these problems that we are to-day somewhat helplessly–not to say carelessly-facing, forgetful that they are living, growing social questions whose progeny will survive to curse the nation, unless we grapple with them manfully and intelligently.” (6)
Social Problems Are Evolving and This Isn’t Unique to Black People: “All social growth means a succession of social problems… Questions of labor, caste, ignorance and race were bound to arise in America; they were simply complicated here and intensified there by the presence of the Negro.” (6-7)
Why Black People Aren’t Being Incorporated Into American Society Properly, 1898: “The points at which they fail to be incorporated into this group life constitute the particular Negro problems, which can be divided into two distinct but correlated parts, depending on two facts:
First-Negroes do not share the full national life because as a mass they have not reached a sufficiently high grade of culture.
Secondly-They do not share the full national life because there has always existed in America a conviction-varying in intensity, but always widespread-that people of Negro blood should not be admitted into the group life of the nation no matter what their condition might be.” (7)
We Will Need A Lot More Than Government Intervention: “Even if special legislation and organized relief intervene, freedmen always start life under and economic disadvantage which generations, perhaps centuries, cannot overcome. Again, of all the important constituent parts of our nation, the Negro is by far the most ignorant; nearly half of the race are absolutely illiterate, only a minority of the other half have thorough common school trining, and but a remnant are liberally educated. The great deficiency of the Negro, however, is his small knowledge of the art of organized social life-that last expression of human culture.” (7-8)
MAIN POINT (1):
WE NEED TO PROPERLY STUDY THESE PROBLEMS
Even Thomas Jefferson Said So, 100 Years Ago:”Nearly a hundred years ago Thomas Jefferson complained that the nation had never studied the real condition of the slaves and that, therefore, all general conclusions about them were extremely hazardous. We of another age can scarcely say that we have made material progress in this study.” (9)
Let’s Recognize the Importance of Recognizing Perspective: “Nothing makes intelligent discussion of the Negro’s position so fruitless as the repeated failure to discriminate between the different questions that concern him. If a Negro discusses the question, he is apt to discuss simply the problem of race prejudice; if a Southern white man writes on the subject he is apt to discuss problems of ignorance, crime and social degradation; and yet each calls the problem he discusses the Negro problem, leaving in the dark background the really crucial questions as to the relative importance fo the many problems involved.” (9)
Studying Everything is Impossible But: “To this objection it is only necessary to answer that however difficult it may be to know all about the Negro, it is certain that we can know vastly more than we do, and that we can have our knowledge in more systematic and intelligible form. As things are, our opinions upon the Negro are more matters of faith than of knowledge.” (10)
The Importance of a Well-Informed, Nuanced View of the Problem: “Whenever any nation allows impulse, whim or hasty conjecture to usurp the place of conscious, normative, intelligent action, it is in grave danger. The sole aim of any society is to settle its problems in accordance with its highest ideals, and the only rational method of accomplishing this is to study those problems in the light of the best scientific research.” (10)
Contradictory Conclusions About Blacks Arise From Uncritical Analysis: “The layman who does not pretend to first hand knowledge of the subject and who would learn of students is to-day woefully puzzled by absolutely contradictory evidence. One student declares that Negroes are advancing in knowledge and ability; that they are working, establishing homes, and going into business, and that the problem will soon be one of the past. Another student of equal learning declares that the Negro is degenerating–sinking into crime and social immorality, receiving little help from education, still in the main a menial servant, and destined in a short time to settle the problem by dying entirely out. Such and many other contradictory conclusions arise from the uncritical use of material.” (13)
“We continually judge the whole from the part we are familiar with; we continually assume the material we have at hand to be typical; we reverently receive a column of figures without asking who collected them, how they were arranged, how far they are valid and what chances of error they contain; we receive the testimony of men without asking whether they were trained or ignorant, careful or careless, truthful or given to exaggeration, and, above all, whether they are giving facts or opinions.” (13)
MAIN POINT (2): THE NECESSITY OF TRUTH-SEEKING
“The scope of any social study is first of all limited by the general attitude of public opinion toward truth and truth-seeking. If in regard to any social problem there is for any reason a persistent refusal on the part of the people to allow the truth to be known, then manifestly that problem cannot be studied.” (16)
“The right to enter this field undisturbed and untrammeled will depend largely on the attitude of science itself. Students must be careful to insist that science as such-be it physics, chemistry, psychology, or sociology-has but one simple aim: the discovery of truth. Its results lie open for the use of all men-merchants, physicians, men of letters, and philanthropists, but the aim of science itself is simple truth. Any attempt to give it a double aim, to make social reform the immediate instead of the mediate object of a search for truth, will inevitably tend to defeat both objects.” (16)
Du Bois talks about the way this science should be structured and its agreed upon aims pages 16-21.
Du Bois talks about who should be conducting this research pages 21-23 and emphasizes that the only agents who can do this work: The Government & The Universities (he commends UPenn’s work in this!).
Powerful Concluding Paragraph:
“The necessity must again be emphasized of keeping clearly before students the objects of all science, amid the turmoil and intense feeling that clouds the discussion of a burning social question. We live in a day when in spite of the brilliant accomplishments of a remarkable century, there is current much flippant criticism of scientific work; when the truth-seeker is too often pictured as devoid of human sympathy, and careless of human ideals. We are still prone in spite of all our culture to sneer at the heroism of the laboratory while we cheer the swagger of the street broil. At such a time true lovers of humanity can only hold higher the pure ideals of science, and continue to insist that if we would solve a problem we must study it, and that there is but one coward on earth, and that is the coward that dare not know.” (23)
Bibliography
Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Study of the Negro Problems” (1898) The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.
