Du Bois on (Mostly) Ignoring the Racists
Limiting the time spent defending the truth from those committed to ignorance.
By the time W.E.B. Du Bois published Black Reconstruction in American, 1860-1880, he had already been writing about the years following the Civil War and their impact on African American citizens for decades. In the war's aftermath, a scholarly consensus had begun developing which claimed that the period of reconstruction had largely been a failure and that Black people had, at best, not benefited from federal protection in the South or, at worst, sabotaged those efforts.
The Harvard-educated sociologist Du Bois and one of the founders of the NAACP had written numerous rebuttals to this white supremacist historiography and Black Reconstruction was his definitive response. In it he showed in meticulous detail how the (so-called) lack of African American progress following the war was largely due to the sustained and systematic efforts by the federal and state government to re-entrench white supremacy as the rule of law.
I've been dipping into Black Reconstruction as I finish a chapter for the book I'm working on. It's Du Bois' very short introduction that I want to highlight. Here is the last paragraph.
It would be only fair to the reader to say frankly in advance that the attitude of any person toward this story will be distinctly influenced by his theories of the Negro race. If he believes that the Negro in America and in general is an average and ordinary human being, who under given environment develops like other human beings, then he will read this story and judge it by the facts adduced. If, however, he regards the Negro as a distinctly inferior creation, who can never successfully take part in modern civilization and whose emancipation and enfranchisement were gestures against nature, then he will need something more than the sort of facts that I have set down. But this latter person, I am not trying to convince. I am simply pointing out these two points of view, so obvious to Americans, and then without further ado, I am assuming the truth of the first. In fine, I am going to tell this story as though Negroes were ordinary human beings, realizing that this attitude will from the first seriously curtail my audience.
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois
Atlanta, December, 1934
Du Bois does a couple of things in this introduction that I think we could learn from. First, he acknowledges that very different starting points exist on the question about the success of reconstruction. If, according to the author, the reader regards the average Black person as a "distinctly inferior creation," then they will be unconvinced by Du Bois' arguments. Their preconceived ideas about African American people preclude them from any openness to the complicated story the author will tell.
The acknowledgement is important because Du Bois is not an attempting to convince racists about their racism. The intended reader is one who can see how Black people share the same mundane and interesting humanity as everyone else. But by acknowledging those prone to a white supremacist reading of history right from the beginning, Du Bois can't be accused of sticking his head in the sand and hoping for the best. No, he understands what he's up against and is simply choosing to direct his attention elsewhere.
And that's the second thing that Du Bois' introduction offers us. By only giving the white supremacist version of history the shortest amount of attention, the author makes it clear that his energy will be dedicated to reality. He's not going to get sucked into debating those whose assumptions are warped by dehumanizing ideologies. There may be a place for that apologetic, but this will not be his focus.
I sometimes worry that, in the work of racial justice, too much of our energy is devoted to rebutting racists. Again, there's certainly a place for this. A society which teaches the "benefits" of enslavement will always need defenders of reality. But how much of our time ought to be spent defending the truth against those committed to ignorance?
What Du Bois models is a commitment to a constructive vision based in the truth. By swatting away those devoted to their delusions he protects the necessary space to deal in reality. For Du Bois, that space was often devoted to excavating a more accurate telling of history so that its contemporary implications could be grappled with. For some of us, that reality-rooted space could be used to build for shalom. By refusing to spend our time rehashing debates that people like Du Bois won generations ago, we can devote ourselves to the good and creative work of nurturing communities and cultures of repair and flourishing.
As you pursue racial justice in your context, how much energy is spent on the defensive? Some of that effort is inescapable but don't let it become where you spend most of your time. There's simply too much good for us to build together.
As a local church pastor, Jake Meador's recent article in The Atlantic about why people leave church resonated strongly with me.
The tragedy of American churches is that they have been so caught up in this same world that we now find they have nothing to offer these suffering people that can’t be more easily found somewhere else. American churches have too often been content to function as a kind of vaguely spiritual NGO, an organization of detached individuals who meet together for religious services that inspire them, provide practical life advice, or offer positive emotional experiences. Too often it has not been a community that through its preaching and living bears witness to another way to live.
Earlier this month our family spent two glorious weeks in Puerto Rico. We fell real hard for that beautiful island, including its incredible fruit.
The newsletter will likely continue to be especially intermittent this summer as I keep plugging away on the book. Thanks for reading!