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Social Forces 91(3) 955–973, March 2013 doi: 10.1093/sf/sos188

Advance Access publication on 4 January 2013

W. E. B. Du Bois: Reform, Will, and the Veil

Lynn England, Utah Valley University W. Keith Warner, Brigham Young University

While W. E. B. Du Bois is widely recognized for his contributions to the soci-ology of race, his contributions to the foundations of sociology are largely ignored. His sociology is based on African American reformism, a version of pragmatism, and a contingent historicism. The basic view of sociology is one that emphasizes the role of chance and will as opposed to law and certainty. He called sociology “the science of free will.” His view of society is one that focuses on the his- torical contingency of the structure of society, the malleability of society, and the fun- damental feature of American society: a society built around the “color line” or “veil.” This view of society is not merely an interesting historical anomaly, but has significant implications for the understanding of and development of contemporary sociology.

Introduction W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963) was an innovative contributor to the emergence of sociology and the development of African American intellectual perspec- tives. He authored numerous publications, especially The Souls of Black Folk, The Philadelphia Negro and most of the Atlanta University Conference Annual Reports. He pioneered the scientific study of community. Du Bois frequently organized significant reform movements to confront a racist world, playing a key role in the founding of the American Negro Academy, the pan-African movement and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). His contributions to sociology, both as scholar and reformer, were rarely acknowledged by sociologists during his long lifetime (Wright 2002, 2005; Mckee 1993). Du Bois commented that “as far as the American world of science and letters was concerned, we never ‘belonged’. . .We rated merely as Negroes studying Negroes.” (1968:228)

The American Journal of Sociology did not review the Philadelphia Negro and only reviewed two of the Atlanta University Conference reports. The contents of the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology illus- trate the degree to which he was ignored by sociologists. He published only two brief articles in the American Journal of Sociology (Du Bois 1908, 1944a) and none in the American Sociological Review. He was rarely cited in mainstream sociology up to the 1970’s (Rudwick 1969). He is cited three times (three of his

Keith Warner is now deceased. His scholarship and colleagueship continue here.

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works are referenced) in the American Journal of Sociology and seven times (four of his works referenced) in the American Sociological Review between 1970 and 1995. Young and Deskins (2001) point out that the second generation of African American sociologists was trained exclusively by white sociologists, not by Du Bois. Feagin (2001) states:

By the 1930s and 1940s the critical, counter-system approaches of soci- ologists like Addams and Du Bois were losing out to a politically safe, academic, and distancing sociology. Sociology was increasingly becom- ing a discipline whose college and university departments were . . . often linked to elite interests. (9)

Bobo (2000) points to “entrenched racism”(187) as the reason sociologists failed to acknowledge Du Bois’s contributions to sociology. Green and Driver (1978) are a major exception. They document his innovative research and writ- ing on community and race.

Since 1995 the situation has changed dramatically with the publication of several applications of his ideas (e.g., Rawls 2000; Blau and Brown 2001) and book length studies of his work. Young and Deskins (2001) note that “Du Bois is the subject of literature, the sheer amount of which is an affirmation that Du Bois was the seminal figure in turn-of-the-century studies of African Americans and race relations.”(450) Some of the growing recognition credits Du bois with innovations that go beyond race and community to sociology in general. Feagin’s (2001) American Sociological Association (ASA) presidential address relied on Du Bois’s autobiographies. A 2004 plenary session of the ASA, “W.E.B. Du Bois: Lessons for the 21st Century,” was introduced by ASA President Michael Buraway: “He is the most distinguished public sociologist of the Twentieth Century whether we consider the United States or the whole world.” Zuckerman (2004) argued that Du Bois’s contributions are equal to those of sociologists who have been “canonized.” He is “an example of a ground-breaking, prolific, and seminal social theorist whose . . . output was systematically ignored, excluded, and erased by the academic powers.”(2)

Some contemporary Du Bois scholars are moving beyond the tribute stage to a thorough, systematic analysis of his work. They credit Du Bois with major contributions to sociology. He is a transdisciplinary Africana critical theorist whose work transcends the sociology of race, urban studies and even sociology (Gilroy 1993, 2010; Gordon 2008; Morris 2007; Rabaka 2008, 2009, 2010; Winant 2007). Their scholarship challenges sociologists to pro- duce a careful examination of the detail of Du Bois’s sociological theorizing. We strive to establish the uniqueness and value of his work by building on the recent Du Bois scholarship to accomplish three principal objectives. First, we present his unique sociological perspective. He synthesized African, African American and Euro-American ideas into a pluricentric perspective. Second, we examine the essential feature of his theory of society and identity, the veil or color line: a compelling theory of history, domination and discrimination. Third, we discuss the relevance of his perspective for understanding contem- porary society.

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Du Bois’s Sociological Perspective We do not have space to fully scrutinize the debate on the influences on Du Bois’s sociology. He has been characterized as Hegelian (Williamson 1978; Zamir 1995), Jamesian (Boxill 1996; Deegan 1988; Zamir 1995), Eurocentric (Asante 1988; West 1993, 1999; Zamir 1995), Victorian (West 1999) and African American (Bowser 2002; Gates and West 1996; Gooding Williams 1996).

Gilroy (2010) argues Du Bois’s scholarship is not simply another example of Eurocentric scholarship. Exposure to and comradeship with black intellec- tuals, including Frederick Douglass, Sojourner Truth, Ida Wells-Barnett, Anna Julia Cooper, Edward Blyden and Alexander Crummell, was essential to the development of his thought and activities. His ideas, concepts, terminology and actions are not simply white, bourgeois or elitist, but they also include major ele- ments of African and African American thought and experience. For example, Du Bois’s use of the notion of the color line is shared with Frederick Douglass (1881). Blyden (1887) defined sociology as the science of race.

He was also influenced by the work of white intellectuals including William James, G. W. F. Hegel, Gustav von Schmoller and Max Weber. His view is a creative extension and systematization of aspects of African, African American, European and American scholarship. Persons familiar with these four will read- ily recognize elements of each in Du Bois’s work, often intertwined in the same concept. For example, Du Bois relies heavily on the idea of soul and spirit. This signals Hegelian influence to the European scholar. It points to the all pervasive- ness and wholeness of the sacred and the magical to the African (Asante 2000). It takes a creative and transcultural form in Du Bois. He does not fit any school of his time and must be recognized for his own sociological pioneering.

Du Bois did not explicate his theoretical and philosophical view systemati- cally. In 1956, he wrote: “Several times . . . I have started to formulate it [my philosophy], but met with such puzzled looks that it remains only partially set down in scraps of manuscript.”(1978:395) We will attempt such a formulation.

Race is the central feature of society for Du Bois. Stratification and order are secondary. Reform and ethical judgments are essential. Emotion occupies a position in the core instead of being submerged in the periphery. He developed a sociology founded on six interconnected, fundamental assumptions: (1. the organizing principle of sociological endeavors must be an activist, critical reformism aimed at eradicating racial discrimination and domination; (2. emo- tion is fundamental to sociological knowledge and social life; (3. ethical judg- ments are inescapable features of sociological analyses; (4. scientific theory and law are understood instrumentally; (5. chance pervades human existence; and (6. society and identity are constructed from a dialectic of tradition and human purpose. None of these assumptions is unique to Du Bois, but his articulation of them and the manner in which they are conjoined provides a significant alterna- tive to orthodox sociology.

We will examine each of the assumptions with some care, relying on a sys- tematic analysis of his published and unpublished work. We draw from some of his lesser known published work, “Conservation of Races” ([1897] 1995),

W. E. B. Du Bois: Reform, Will, and the Veil 957

“Sociology Hesitant” ([1905] 2000), “The Damnation of Women” ([1920] 1995b) and “The Souls of White Folk” ([1920] 1995a), along with some of his unpublished writings including “The Renaissance of Ethics” (1890). The contrasting styles of The Souls of Black Folk and The Philadelphia Negro offer significant insights into his theorizing. The Souls of Black Folk uses a literary style with sorrow songs, anecdotes and emotion producing a masterful, sensi- tive and critical view of American society in an African narrative style: Asante’s (1998) noomo. The Philadelphia Negro is a systematic, multimethod, scientific description of African American urban society using extensive empirical docu- mentation. These two styles reveal the dialectic of Du Bois’s theorizing: an effort to synthesize the power of empirical sociology with the sensitivity and depth of song, poetry and narrative.

The purpose of Du Bois’s sociology is to promote the elimination of discrimi- nation, domination, and inequality. Reformism was a feature of the work of many of Du Bois’s contemporary sociologists as well as many late twentieth cen- tury sociologists (e.g., Bourdieu and Wacquant 1992; Giddens 1984; Lee 1973), but its role in his sociology differed from virtually all of them. Some 21st century sociologists have adopted his approach (Buroway 2005; Gaventa and Tendon 2010). He did not do sociology hoping it would be helpful to reformers; active involvement was essential to his sociology. “Du Bois came to the conclusion that the study of a problem was a necessary but insufficient means of eliminating it . . . knowledge by itself does not compel action.” (Gordon 2000:94)

African American reformism, as formulated by Du Bois and other African American intellectuals (e.g., Garnet [1843] 1951; Douglass 1881; Oldfield 1995; Wells-Barnett 1892), assumes that society is changeable, that the contemporary conditions of many people are the immoral consequences of culture and history (not human nature or the structure of society), that change is imperative but will occur only through the conscious actions of African Americans or other disad- vantaged persons, and that historical and social scientific research contributes significantly to the reform effort. Young and Deskins (2001) note that a major feature of Du Bois’s reformism, in contrast with that of Robert Park and his African American students, was that “Park assumed the position of the detached observer.”(461) Consequently, Park and his students “lacked a critical disposi- tion toward the racial attitudes of white Americans and the structural founda- tions of racism.”(461) Du Bois saw the futility and danger of detachment opting for an activist, critical reformism.

I realized that . . . the social scientist could not sit apart and study in vacuo; neither on the other hand, could he work . . . simply by intuition and emotion, without seeking. . . the ordered knowledge which research and tireless observation might give him. (1944b:56-57)

Du Bois’s view of the role of science was tempered by his recognition that scientists are influenced by nonscientific prejudices.

Much of the work done on the Negro question is notoriously uncritical; uncritical from lack of discrimination in the selection and weighting of evidence; uncritical in choosing the proper point of view from which to

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study these problems, and finally, uncritical from the distinct bias in the minds of many writers . . . worthless as science. (1898:12-13)

Much of the sociology of his time lacked guiding principles and was direction- less, except as an effort to produce “pure” knowledge. Reform provided the direction, principles and organization. “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 problems in the light of the best scientific research.”(10) Action and research must be related reciprocally.

Du Bois’s understanding of reform, as well as its relationship to science, devel- oped and matured through his experiences. His commitment to reform started while he was a schoolboy and was enhanced at Fisk. He wrote of reform and science in his application for a Harvard graduate scholarship.

I have devoted most of my college work to Philosophy, Political Economy, and History . . . I wish to make the field of social science under political science with a view to the ultimate application of its principles to the social and economic advancement of the Negro people. ([1890] 1976:7)

It was further refined at Harvard. James and others “turned me back from the lovely but sterile land of philosophic speculation, to the social sciences as the field for gathering and interpreting that body of fact which would apply to my program for the Negro.” (1968:148) This was amplified and matured by the experiences described in The Souls of Black Folk including Little Josie, Sam Hose’s lynching and his own son’s death. After his tenure at Atlanta University, he noted:

I became widely-acquainted with the real condition of my people. I real- ized the terrific odds which faced them. At Wilberforce I was their cap- tious critic. In Philadelphia I was their cold and scientific investigator with microscope and probe. It took a few years of Atlanta to bring me to hot indignant defense. I saw the race-hatred of whites as I had never dreamed of it before—naked and unashamed! The faint discrimination of my hopes and intangible dislikes paled into nothing before this great, red monster of cruel oppression. I held back with more difficulty each day my mounting indignation against injustice and misrepresentation . . . I saw life through all its paradox and contradiction of streaming eyes and mad merriment. ([1920] 1969:21)

By 1921 Du Bois ([1921] 1995) wrote: “They [critics of the Crisis] must also remember that we have one chief cause–the emancipation of the Negro, and to this all else must be subordinated . . . the most important social question today is recognition of the darker races.”(532) Reformism based on this recognition requires that racial differences not be the result of invariant scientific laws. “The deeper differences are spiritual, psychical, differences—. . . a common history, common laws and religion, similar habits of thought and a conscious striv- ing together for certain ideals of life.” ([1897] 1995:22) These differences are malleable.

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Du Bois’s understanding of the unjust suffering and lack of opportunity aris- ing from discrimination and domination led him to the conclusion that feel- ing has a foundational place in sociology. An unpublished, undated manuscript titled “Steps, Toward a Science of How Men Act,” replaces the Cartesian I think with I feel. “Feeling is the primary and only direct knowledge of truth which mankind has.” (1)

First, feeling is central to the sociological enterprise. His reformism is based on the futility of an effort to be the detached intellectual ([1920] 1969:21), even though he is often accused of being just that. Second, emotion is a central fea- ture of social life. Much of the content of the Souls of Black Folk demonstrates that a dominated people is understood only through the pain, sorrow and suf- fering accompanying discrimination and domination. Each chapter begins with a stanza of poetry written by a white poet and a bar of music from one of the African American sorrow songs: both emphasize faith, suffering and a cry for relief. Du Bois’s view of society replaces the order and rationalism of traditional sociology with the race-based experiences of disadvantage, suffering and bigotry. When one reads Durkheim, Marx or Weber, the sense of the awe and wonder that is part of the sacred, the agony and despair of alienation, or the emotional compulsion and guilt of the Protestant Ethic are rarely present. In contempo- rary use of these notions, scaling and measurement often produce a number for statistical analyses in place of the emotional content of the experience. It is common to analyze statistical models of poverty, exploitation and harassment without ever acknowledging the damage, despair and anguish present in the experiences of the poor or the oppressed. Sorrow, agony, joy and laughter drive reform, the study of society and social processes.

Reform and emotion are supplemented by Du Bois’s view that scientific findings are developed and evaluated on the basis of the morality of their con- sequences. An early unpublished paper (1890) written while Du Bois was a graduate student at Harvard, “The Renaissance of Ethics,” argues in Jamesian fashion that ethical concerns have ontological and motivational significance.

The fundamental question of the universe . . . is duty. Given a universe with two possible futures and the question becomes to each individual How much difference will it make if this be tomorrow’s universe rather than that? . . . How much better is the best possible universe I can help make than the worst possible? If the difference between these two possible universes is the difference between Heaven and Hell, my duty is a vastly different thing than as though the difference were that of pleasure and pain . . . how much better is the best that can be than the worst? (14-15)

Du Bois’s third principle integrates the ethical, reform and the real. The present could have been otherwise had individuals seen their duty differently. The future is constructed out of past and present decisions, which necessarily include moral judgments. As a result, past and present ethical and value judgments are major factors in the construction of the emergent real. They make the existential demand that every person take responsibility for the production of future states of society. His first three assumptions are radical departures from the positivism

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and realism popular in the sociology of the early and mid-20th century (e.g., Blalock 1969; Hempel and Oppenheim 1948; Homans 1961; Lenski and Lenski 1970; Parsons 1951).

Fourth, duty and the malleability of the universe led Du Bois to an instrumen- talist view of scientific law. James characterized scientific law as ideas that lead to a “temporary terminus of debate and difficulty” (James [1907] 1955:142) to be re-opened to further debate and modification when required by practical experience. Du Bois’s (undated) “Steps, Toward a Science of How Men Act” contains his extension of James’s ideas.

Here the great scientific tool of the hypothesis is discovered; we assume that certain things are true; we act as though this assumption is Truth. The ensuing facts of our experience arrange themselves in accord with our assumption. Therefore our assumption is True; or the facts agree except in certain particulars; we arrange our assumption to fit the new experience or more fully to explain the old. The new hypothesis becomes accepted Truth. But all Truth, save our own feelings, we hold tentatively and watchfully, ready to change our conception, once a new explanation or phenomena fits the facts more perfectly. (3)

Du Bois’s instrumentalism involves emergent facts that “arrange themselves” based on human hypothesis and their own activity. “Facts, in social science, I realized, were elusive things: emotions, loves, hates, were facts . . . in the souls and minds of the scientific student, as well as in the persons studied.” (1944b:57)

The tentativeness and watchfulness arises from a basic feature of human soci- ety: chance, Du Bois’s fifth principle.

For what Law was I searching? In accord with what unchangeable scien- tific law of action was the world of interracial discord about me work- ing? . . . I saw the action of physical law in the actions of men; but I saw more than that: I saw rhythms and tendencies; coincidences and prob- abilities; and I saw that, which . . . I must in accord with the strict tenets of Science, call Chance. I went forward to build a sociology, which I conceived of as an attempt to measure the element of Chance in human conduct. This was James’s pragmatism, applied not simply to ethics, but to all human action (Du Bois 1944b:57-58).

Sociology seeks both physical law and chance. Chance is manifest in rhythms and tendencies, coincidences and probabilities. Law and chance operate dialecti- cally within the same phenomenon. They are tools or instruments to be used to construct answers to lived problems.

His view is amplified in “Sociology Hesitant.”

We note a primary and a secondary rhythm. A primary rhythm depend- ing . . . on physical forces and physical law; but within this appears again and again a secondary rhythm which while presenting nearly the same uniformity as the first, differs from it in its more or less sudden rise at a given time, in accordance with prearranged plan and prediction and in being liable to stoppage and change according to similar plan. An

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example of primary uniformity is the death rate, of secondary unifor- mity, the operation of a woman’s club; to confound the two sorts of human uniformity is fatal to clear thinking; to explain them we must assume Law and Chance working in conjunction. ([1905] 2000:44)

Demographic regularities are Du Bois’s examples of sociological law. However, higher levels of human conduct involve planning, which reproduces or changes the rhythms. The operation of a women’s club is his example: the women’s club movement of the early years of the 20th century was a planned effort by women to achieve a voice, promote reform and accumulate power in a male dominated world.

Du Bois’s characterizations of sociology as “measuring the limits of chance” and “the science of freewill” ([1904] 1978:53) provides a rich imagery. Chance is not a temporary feature of our understanding to be overcome when we dis- cover better laws. It is intrinsic to the nature of social action and things. Chance is on an intellectual and ontological par with scientific law. It is planned and interpretative with practical and theoretical meaning derived from ethics, emo- tions and will. It constrains sociology to pragmatic, historicist positions, oth- erwise humankind is reduced to “an automaton and . . . Ethics unmeaning and Reform a contradiction in terms.” ([1899] 1967:395)

The final element of Du Bois’s sociology is embedded in his other principles. He was not a believer in the grand schemes of societal change. The future is contingent on the actions of the actors themselves ([1897] 1995, [1905] 2000, [1920] 1995a, [1920] 1995b). Du Bois’s historicism contends that the present develops out of the past and is conditioned by it, but chance and agency offer the prospects of planned changes and redirection of the course of history. Peoples’ efforts and actions build from their historical present to a future contingent on their choices and decisions and the influence of tradition. The outcome is neither guaranteed nor predictable. He wrote: “I saw no evidence of such divine guid- ance. I did see evidence of the decisive action of human beings.” (1978:396)

When this view is applied to the study of African Americans, Du Bois argued historical racism [especially the institutions of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and segregation] is the primary reason for the predicament of African Americans. The institutions were rationalized by prejudices and customs accumulated from the papal and monarchical decrees in the 1400s through history to the theories of race created during Du Bois’s lifetime. Future conditions are changeable through planned actions including the creation of the talented tenth, institutions such as the American Negro Academy and NAACP, and the enlightenment of the white community. However the resolution of the problem can be thwarted by the actions of others. Du Bois employed this historicism in his publications and actions. He (1905) summarized the nature of the influence of history.

All our ideas of God, right, and duty, of government and science, of lit- erature and art had their origin in the past and though we may rightly boast that we have watered, embellished and tricked off the tree of civilization, yet we must never forget that we did not plant it and that its roots lie buried in the far distant past. (104)

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In a critique of Sorokin’s work on systems, Du Bois (Coulborn and Du Bois 1942) viewed society as an historical system whose actors “operate” it. “The agents construct a pure system and change it step by step in an evolutionary manner . . . The process is not mechanistic, it is humanistic.”(505-6)

This humanistic historicism diverges from most U.S. social science. Ross noted “American social science [is] a-historical and scientistic, lacking in appre- ciation of historical difference and complexity.”(1991:xiii) Du Bois’s integrates the historicism into a multidisciplinary perspective.

In summary, Du Bois’s sociology was based on six basic, interrelated principles:

1. Activist critical reform to eliminate discrimination and domination is the organizing principle of sociology.

2. Emotion and feeling are fundamental to sociological analysis and social life. 3. Ethical considerations are intrinsic to the construction of all human endeav-

ors, including science. 4. Social scientific law is understood instrumentally. 5. Chance, random and planned action, operates in society in a dialectical rela-

tion with social scientific law. 6. Historical processes must be taken into account in understanding the pres-

ent, but the future is the result of the interaction of the past with present willed endeavors.

The six principles combine Du Bois’s personal experiences, his African American heritage, the scholarship of African American intellectuals, James’s pragmatism and European thought. Each of these is significant in the formation of his thought without any one of them exercising the role of dominant inter- pretive frame. Du Bois’s six principles are a creative and unique integration of diverse perspectives.

Theorizing the Veil The principle of the veil is the central feature of Du Bois’s theory of society and identity. It assumes the six propositions. The veil, or the color line, is often refer- enced as one of Du Bois’s major contributions, but his conceptualization of the veil has not been examined in depth. He ([1940] 1975) explicates it in juxtaposi- tion to Marxian “class.”

The Communist philosophy . . . did not envisage a situation where instead of a horizontal division of classes, there was a vertical fissure, a complete separation of classes by race, cutting square across the eco- nomic layers. Even if on one side of this color line, the dark masses were overwhelmingly workers, . . . nevertheless the split between white and black workers was greater than that between white workers and capitalists; and this split depended not simply on economic exploitation but on a racial folk-lore grounded on centuries of instinct, habit and thought and implemented by the conditioned reflex of visible color. (204-5)

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The veil represents a ubiquitous fracturing of society along racial lines. It is present in the structure and culture of society and the development and content of a person’s identity.

At the societal level, the veil is a schism creating two separate, interacting systems: one is the potent, privileged white system and the other is the disem- powered and devalued nonwhite system. A statement in an unpublished draft of the Farmville, Virginia report ([1898] 1995) states: “It is two worlds separate, yet bound together like those double stars that bound for all time wheel round each other separate, yet one” (about 1897-1898:2). Each side of the veil has its own class structure, institutions and culture. Yet the two sides interact with domination and distortion characterizing the cross-veil dynamics. Each side is only understandable in its relationship to the other ([1920] 1969:29-51). Du Bois elaborated on the nature of the Veil: “The great Veil- now dark- sinister and wall-like, now light filmy, silky, but every a dividing veil . . . separating the two peoples. At times you may not see it–it may be too thin to notice, but it is ever there.” (about 1897-1898:1-2)

The veil has an ominous, concrete character for those who are dominated. Its processes may be unnoticed and subtle or aggressive and overt, but it limits and biases contact between the races. Daily life on the black side of the veil is little experienced or understood by the white side. Whites (including the white sociologists of Du Bois’s time) typically “see’’ only the most negative, unfavor- able aspects of black society. They “see” the prostitutes and criminals while overlooking the lawyers, factory workers, and school teachers. They see broken families while ignoring heroic efforts at family.

Those on the black side experience the most brutal and uncaring side of white society. As a result, they recognize features of the white side that are unrecog- nized by whites and are threatening to the whites’ view of themselves (e.g., the un-Christ-like workings of white Christianity). The structure of life, culture and identity on the black side of the veil is largely the outcome of domination and discrimination by whites. The distortion of perception and experience on both sides is driven by white prejudice and stereotyping. Du Bois describes the role of prejudice in The Philadelphia Negro.

In the Negro’s mind, color prejudice in Philadelphia is that widespread feeling of dislike for his blood, which keeps him and his children out of decent employment, from certain public conveniences and amusements, from hiring houses in many sections, and in general from being recog- nized as a man . . . most white people are quite unconscious of any such powerful and vindictive feeling. ([1899] 1967:322)

The veil’s development was not accidental, but intentional. The white elite created it, structure and ideology, for self-protection, to promote their interests and to obtain cheap, disciplined labor ([1920] 1995a). The white elite

could have educated and uplifted the blacks and gradually inducted them into political power and real industrial emancipation . . . There was no such disposition, and under the profit ideal of a capitalist organization, there could not have been. That would have required . . . an industrial

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unselfishness of which capitalist organization does not for a moment admit. ([1935] 1992:620)1

To rationalize the exploitation and domination, the white elite developed a view of African Americans that places them

somewhere between men and cattle . . . a Negro–a clownish, simple creature, at times even loveable within its limitations, but straightly ordained to walk within the Veil . . . some of them with favoring chance might become men, but in sheer self-defense we dare not let them, and we build about them walls so high and hang between them and the light a veil so thick, that they shall not even think of breaking through. ([1903] 1989:75)

While the black side of the veil is subject to domination and much of the structure of the black side is imposed, African Americans have skillfully pre- served elements of African social structure and created new forms of interaction and structure, often without being noted by the white side. Du Bois’s descrip- tions of life at Fisk illustrate this ([1903] 1989).

Du Bois conducted careful investigations into stratification, institutions and culture that demonstrate the nature of the veil. It produces two distinct sys- tems of stratification: black and white. Du Bois’s empirical research described the black side, whether in Philadelphia or in a rural village in Georgia: (1. the talented tenth who live well with limited means; (2. the working class, primar- ily unskilled blue collar workers and servants; (3. the very poor; and (4. the submerged tenth who live in deprived conditions with ethical systems detached from every other part of society (Green and Driver 1978; Du Bois [1899] 1967).

Du Bois focused on the talented tenth and the poor. The talented tenth was strengthened by access to a liberal arts education. “The power of this aristocracy of talent was to lie in its knowledge and character and not in its wealth.” (1940: 217) At the other extreme of the class system, the submerged tenth and the poor were in an impossible predicament.

To be a poor man is hard, but to be a poor race in a land of dollars is the very bottom of hardships. He felt the weight of his ignorance,– not sim- ply of letters, but of life, of business, of the humanities; the accumulated sloth and shirking and awkwardness of decades and centuries shackled his hands and feet. ([1903] 1989:9)

Du Bois notes that the United States is also a society of dual institutions. The African American side of the veil has its own churches, family structure, media and economic enterprises with unique African and African American features. It also has its hotels, charities, amusement parks, books, newspapers and concerts. The institutions on the black side of the veil are often dominated and exploited by white institutions. For example, the white elite often determine the curricu- lum and teaching techniques used in schools for black children, while providing few resources.

Those living on the black side have an energy and creativity that has produced vibrant forms of worship, living, family and community often based on African

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traditions. The white side of the veil “borrows” many of the most creative prod- ucts of black institutions, such as music and theater, often without acknowledg- ment (Du Bois [1899] 1989, [1903] 1989, 1909).

Culture is a third feature of American society structured by the veil. The creations of African American culture, such as gospel music, jazz, literature and poetry, represent the only major contributions of American culture to the world.

The music of Negro religion is that plaintive rhythmic melody, with its touching minor cadences, which . . . remains the most original and beau- tiful expression of human life and longing yet born on American soil. Sprung from the African forests, where its counterpart can still be heard, it was adapted, changed, and intensified by the tragic soul-life of the slave, until, under the stress of law and whip, it became the one true expression of a people’s sorrow, despair, and hope. ([1903] 1989:156)

Du Bois did not argue that African American culture was in need of whit- ening as many of his interpreters have suggested. He argued that the African side of African American culture needed to be freed and strengthened. When he lamented some of the habits of the poor blacks (laziness, theft, hopeless- ness, family decline, etc.), he was lamenting the decline of traditional African virtues (hard work, modesty, family and morality) with their African nuances. The values and behaviors Du Bois criticized are not African remnants needing to be whitened, but the product of slavery and the post-Civil War domination of blacks by whites. A return to some features of African culture was a necessary component of reform (Du Bois and Dill 1914; Du Bois [1920]1995b).

In summary, the basic feature of American society is a schism separating white and black belief and action. The veil is characterized by distortion of percep- tion and by domination of blacks by whites. It was constructed intentionally to promote the exploitation of blacks, but could be reformed through the planned action of African Americans.

The veil penetrates to the core of a person’s identity. In one of his most famous statements from The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois characterized African American identity:

The Negro is a sort of seventh son, born . . . in . . . a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double- consciousness, this sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his two-ness,– an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two war- ring ideals in one dark body. ([1903] 1989:4-5)

First, being black includes a false self-consciousness: seeing oneself through “the revelation of the other world.” A person seeks goals that are imposed on him. His identity is alien to himself and arises from forces neither he nor other blacks control. “The worlds I longed for, and all their dazzling opportunities, were theirs, not mine.” (Du Bois [1903] 1989:4) White attributions of black moral

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and intellectual inferiority, of cultural and familial degeneracy, and of lazy and unreliable work habits are internalized by many blacks and incorporated into the identity of a people, though many resist the colonization of identity and self-define. The process is characteristic of dominated peoples, and not limited to African Americans.

Second, Du Bois describes a “twoness” of self: He was African and he was American. They are not integrated into a single consistent identity, but are a conflict-laden melange. However, he would not eliminate either. This fractured identity is not limited to African Americans or to race: This crucial Du Boisian insight applies to identities under postcolonialism (Mignolo 2000), classism (Bourdieu 1984) consumerism (Gilroy 2010) and sexism (Blea 1988), as well as many other forms of discrimination and domination.

Identity is constructed as a result of contingent historical processes. It devel- oped in the United States as a racial folklore constructed within the overt brutal- ity of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights fight and recent, subtle institutionalized racist processes (Bonilla-Silva 2001, 2003).

Du Bois uses active metaphors to depict the workings of the veil, including whites who “build walls” and “hang veils” to maintain subservience. Its con- sequences may be eliminated through intentional action, especially education and increased cross-veil contact. The role of reform and the talented tenth is to engage in activities removing the Veil and promoting complex, self-constructed identities.

Surely there shall yet dawn some mighty morning to lift the Veil and set the prisoned free. Not for me—I shall die in my bonds—but for fresh young souls who have not known the night and awaken to the morning; a morning when men ask of the workman, not “Is he white?” but “Can he work?” When men ask artists, not “Are they black?” but “Do they know?” ([1903] 1989:174)

In summary, the veil has seven characteristics: (1. it is a barrier, often a race- based, fracturing society along virtually every dimension; (2. the black side of the veil is dominated by the white side; (3. the black side of the veil expresses unique creativity in music, literature, the ability to laugh, and insights into the white side; (4. it is a micro and macro level phenomenon influencing identity and society; (5. it is a historical phenomenon that was consciously created by whites beginning with slavery and subsequently modified largely to suit the interests of powerful whites; (6. it can be changed through the conscious efforts of reform- ers such as Du Bois, organizations like the NAACP, and classes such as the tal- ented tenth; and (7. a substantial amount of resistance and creativity has always been manifest on the black side of the veil.

Conclusion In the middle part of the twentieth century sociologists were generally optimis- tic: hopeful that “Science could save us.” (Lundberg [1947] 1961) Many soci- ologists, however, became disillusioned when their dreams of scientific salvation

W. E. B. Du Bois: Reform, Will, and the Veil 967

did not come true. They often retreated into a shell doing technical, politically safe, “pure” sociology. W. E. B. Du Bois developed a sociology whose primary purpose was to reform an unjust society. His sociological theory made it impos- sible for him to retreat into an ivory tower, safe sociology. He blended American pragmatism and historicism with an African American problematic and intellec- tual tradition to produce a theory of society whose main feature is a historically created veil structured by miscommunication, prejudice, inequality and domi- nation. The Du Boisean sociologist is obligated to seek elimination of the veil through reform. The perspective retains its relevance and repeats the urgent call for unveiling action.

The veil did not vanish with modernity, rational society or civil rights move- ments. The concept continues to be useful in understanding the conditions of peoples who are dislocated and dominated under neocolonialism (Gilroy 1993, 2010). Dussell (1995) has used the veil to demonstrate the ways in which peoples continue to be diminished, silenced and obscured. Those who dominate “invent” the dominated creating categories of people to serve the interests of the power- ful: a colonization of souls. However, Du Bois, Gilroy and Dussell emphasize the resistance and creativity of the dominated, a theme given added details by postcolonial scholars such as Dussell (1995), Mignolo (2000), Gruzinski (2002) and Scott (2009). Applications of Du Bois’s principle of the Veil enlighten our understanding of the conditions of many contemporary groups of people. The contemporary black-white veil, societies of multiple, interlocking veils based on racial and gender categories, and inter-societal veils are significant applications of the concept.

The Contemporary Black-White Veil The dream of the civil rights movement was that the veil would be eliminated with the passage of civil rights legislation. The resultant reforms were to accom- plish an unveiling (Blau and Brown 2001), but the veil has taken on new forms instead. Winant (1994) and Bonilla-Silva (2001, 2003) describe a pre-civil rights veil characterized by coercive segregation and violence and a post-civil rights veil characterized by hegemonic discourse, political domination and programs that perpetuate inequalities institutionally. The coercive form has been elimi- nated or modified in some respects, but it remains in regions such as Sudan, Somalia, Iraq, Chicago, Miami, London and Paris. The more subtle form of the veil is impersonal, scientific and rational. It is often based on the use of demo- graphic guidelines, scientific personality tests, profiles and sociological analyses. Bonilla-Silva discusses “color-blind racism” as a feature of this form of the veil. The hegemonic or color-blind veil has been examined by many scholars includ- ing Fordham and Ogbu (1986), Massey (1990), Edwards (1992), Massey and Denton (1993), Wilson (1994), Rawls (2000) and Bonilla-Silva (2003). Massey and Denton (1993) describe the operation of the new veil as “discrimination with a smile.”(96)

A recent theoretical use of the idea of the veil illustrates its usefulness. Rawls (2000) describes the hegemonic veil as including two distinct interaction orders. “White and black appear to occupy the same world geographically, they rarely

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occupy the same interactional space.”(247) Blacks may act black and are obli- gated to act white, but whites are “free” to act white.

Societies of Multiple Veils Modern societies consist of multiple veils based on complex racial, gendered and other historical groupings. The dynamics of these veils are similar to those for blacks and whites, but complicated and enriched by the interaction of the veils. A reading of the literature on Hispanics, Native Americans, and Asian Americans demonstrates the contemporary relevance of veils for each of these groups with their reservations, terminations, deportations and antimarriage laws creating distinct, simultaneous veil dynamics for each. For example, Chicana social sci- entist Irene Blea (1988) explicitly uses the notion of the veil without citing Du Bois: “Social oppression is more than an institution. It is like a veil that hov- ers above and laces throughout the fabric of society.” (141) Many theorists of postcolonial society (Mignolo 1995; Said 1994; Bhabha 1994; Guha and Spivak 1988; and Beltran 1991) describe the continued existence of multiple societal veils based on conquest and schisms between the conqueror and categories of the conquered.

The presence of several veils produces interactions among them. Bonilla-Silva (2001) identifies a set of processes that characterize multiple veils including racialization, genderization, classism and ethnicization. A major challenge today is to refine descriptions of multiple veils, the social dynamics created by mul- tiple veils, and reform these societies. Collins’s (1991) Black Feminist Thought provides an example of such an effort: She combines racial and gendered veils. They separate black women from the remainder of society: the simultaneous operation of race and gender produces a veil behind which black women create a world of their own that interacts with other worlds, but which is constantly in danger of being dominated and overwhelmed by the white and the male sides.

Inter-Societal Veils Many inter-societal systems exhibit the characteristics of the veil. Du Bois’s own description of this veil in “The Souls of White Folk” ([1920] 1969) provides a template for the analyses of colonialism, postcolonialism and subalternity.

Said’s (1994) Orientalism describes the construction and maintenance of a veil between the nations of Europe and Asia. European paradigms of knowledge and scholarship were used to construct and characterize the veiled “Orient” using terms that are European, not Asian. The Orient is strange, alien and magical, while European rationality, comprehensibility and normality justifies European domination of the Orient.

Mignolo’s (1995) study of the renaissance demonstrates the process of the veiling of the “Americas,” through the Spanish Conquest. Natives were forced to adopt Spanish modes of writing, thinking and acting. Indigenous histories and life ways were replaced by Spanish-Christian categories. The Spanish con- structed a veil through the creation of the “Indian.” When debates were con- ducted about the nature of the Indian, they were conducted in Spain between

W. E. B. Du Bois: Reform, Will, and the Veil 969

Spaniards, De Las Casas and Sepulveda, with no Indian present. Yet the natives developed forms of resistance preserving traditions ingeniously concealed from the dominant worldview by the veil.

These three examples of contemporary uses the veil indicate its continued relevance. Even more important, if Du Bois’s problematic had been adopted, sociology could never allow a consideration of race, poverty, gender, colonial or postcolonial conditions or other forms of the veil without a discussion of reform, morality and emotion. Du Bois’s view of sociology and the veil holds a promise of a future focused on recognizing the workings of modern veils and on their removal.

Merton (1965) has written of standing “On the shoulders of Giants.” Freese (1980) has taken this idea further and observes: “We are not, as some would have it, standing on the shoulders of giants; we are standing in their shadows.”(ix) If sociology had stood on Du Bois’s shoulders instead of in the shadows of others, we would see farther and be more engaged in creating just societies. Du Bois’s shoulders still offer that promise.

Note 1 “Industrial emancipation” and “industrial unselfishness” are among many concepts

in Du Bois’s writing that are full of rich imagery, yet unexploited.

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