This is the final edition of an introduction for a
new edition of Darkwater, now available through Humanity Books
publishers.
INTRODUCTION
In Darkwater: Voices from within the Veil, the distinguished
American scholar, W. E. B. Du Bois, presents a set of provocative
essays on racial matters unrivaled in perceptiveness for their time.
Indeed, the insights in some essays remain unrivaled in our time. This
collection was first published in 1920 by the new company of Harcourt,
Brace & Howe. Like his classic book, The Souls of Black Folk,
Du Bois’s masterpiece Darkwater is not only original and
probing in its brilliant ideas but also experimental in its
presentation, ranging from detailed sociopolitical analyses to lyrical
and poetic presentations.
The book has ten major chapters, beginning with an autobiographical
piece and ending with a chilling science fiction story about the
destruction of New York City. In between, there are eight articles of
sociological, economic, and political analysis, with brief fiction and
poetry bridges mixed in, mainly at the ends of chapters. Some chapters
and poetic interludes had been previously published, in such places as
the NAACP’s magazine The Crisis and
in the Atlantic Monthly. In the book’s Postscript Du Bois
accents
the significance of his positioning poetic “tributes to beauty” among
his
“sterner flights of logic.” The two presentation methodologies
complement
and extend one another, and thereby offer a lesson for contemporary
authors.
In an opening Credo, Du Bois articulates what would now be called the
philosophy of multiculturalism: “I believe that all men, black and
brown
and white, are brothers, varying through time and opportunity, in form
and
gift and feature, but differing in no essential particular, and alike
in
soul and the possibility of infinite development.” (484-485) Then he
adds
a statement that some have seen as racial chauvinism: “Especially do I
believe
in the Negro Race: in the beauty of its genius, the sweetness of its
soul,
and its strength in that meekness which shall yet inherit this
turbulent
earth.” (485) This comment can be construed as racially chauvinistic
only
if the reader is insensitive to the impact of racism and takes the
statement
out of the multicultural, multiracial context in which Du Bois offers
it.
For him, it is the human race that is central, and the darker peoples
of
the world may yet be the salvation of that human race. Indeed, a key
argument throughout Darkwater, as the subtitle “Voices from
Within the Veil” indicates, is that those behind the veil of racial
subordination can see much
better into what whites and white society are about, than whites can
see
into the realities of racially subordinated groups.
In Chapter I, “The Shadow of Years,” Du Bois revisits some biographical
details of his life, details that he presented in various ways in a
number of his books. Born of free African Americans in western
Massachusetts, Du Bois writes eloquently of his ancestors. Noting that
the Du Bois side of
his family had a strong mixed-race heritage, he describes how he grew
up
among small farmers, with a mother who was patient and determined and a
father
who, he says, was a dreamer, unreliable, and a poet. Slowly, he became
painfully aware that some local whites viewed his “brown skin a
misfortune; once or twice I became painfully aware that some human
beings even thought it a
crime.” (489) Nonetheless, the racist actions that he regularly
encountered
did not slow him down in his life’s efforts, including his school
studies,
although he did shed some “secret tears” over his racial persecution.
After
he graduated from high school with high honors, a distinctive
achievement
for a young African American facing overt racism, he dreamed of
attending
Harvard. Because of difficult economic circumstances, however, he went
to
a historically Black institution, Fisk University, in Nashville,
Tennessee.
In his senior year at Fisk, he was accepted at Harvard and entered as a
junior. Graduating from Harvard in 1888, he began graduate work in U.S.
history. Later, he would graduate with the first Ph.D. degree given by
Harvard
to an African American.
In this autobiographical chapter Du Bois recounts briefly his first
experience doing empirical research in the new field of sociology, in
which he was an early pioneer. Laboring “morning, noon, and night,” he
conducted the first empirical study of urban Black Americans, a
mid-1890s field study published as The Philadelphia Negro. In this
study he combined survey research methods and a descriptive statistical
analysis with some qualitative data and historical analysis of the
community studied.
Chapter II of Darkwater, titled “The Souls of White Folk,” is
the first major analysis in Western intellectual history to probe
deeply white identity and the meaning of whiteness. In this original
and provocative analysis, Du Bois argues effectively that “the
discovery of personal whiteness among the world's people is a very
modern thing. . . . The ancient world would
have laughed at such a distinction. . . . Today, we have changed all
that,
and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it
is
white and by that token, wonderful!” (497-498) In a trenchant
assessment he
explores the arrogance of the white perspective that claims “title to
the
universe” and that, by emphasis or omission, tries to “make children
believe
that every great soul the world ever saw was a white man’s soul.” (498)
Furthermore,
whites have brought a great “descent to Hell” for the globe’s peoples
of
color. White actions are buttressed by a “deep and passionate hatred”
of
peoples of color. Rhetorically, Du Bois asks whites what they would say
“if
the next census were to report that half of black America was dead and
the
other half dying.” (499) He implies that many would be happy to be rid
of
African Americans. He later chides whites for failing to live up to
their
own moralistic rhetoric; indeed, “the number of white individuals who
are
practising with even reasonable approximation the democracy and
unselfishness of Jesus Christ is so small and unimportant as to be fit
subject for jest in Sunday supplements . . . . “ (501).
One of the most important dimensions of this challenging book is its
recurring global sensitivity and perspective. Chapter II and the other
essays often go beyond U.S. racism to its global context. For example,
Du Bois notes that, while the U.S. government protests against
brutality on the part of European governments, it ignores racial
atrocities at home. Du Bois also makes important connections between
the unjust enrichment of white Europeans over recent
centuries and the unjust impoverishment of people of African ancestry.
The
greatness of Europe, which Du Bois fully acknowledges, comes from the
strength
of its foundation, a foundation built upon the ideas, sciences,
economic
developments, and mineral resources of many parts of the globe, but
especially
those of Africa and Asia. Du Bois worked from a conceptual perspective
critically
assessing the global racial order, perhaps the first social theorist to
do
so. Writing about the years around 1900, he contends that, “White
supremacy
was all but world-wide, Africa was dead, India conquered, Japan
isolated,
and China prostrate, while white America whetted her sword for mongrel
Mexico
and mulatto South America. . . . The using of men for the benefit of
masters
is no new invention of modern Europe. . . . But Europe proposed to
apply
it on a scale and with an elaborateness of detail of which no former
world
ever dreamed. The imperial width of the thing,--the heaven-defying
audacity--makes
its modern newness” (504) The brutal exploitation of African labor and
land
had long been omitted from most historical accounts of European
affluence,
as it often is today.
In other writings Du Bois documented the point that the enslavement of
Africans in the Americas was more extreme than slavery in ancient
societies such as the Roman empire. An essential feature of North
American slavery was the denial of almost all human liberties. Slaves
“could own nothing; they
could make no contracts; they could hold no property; nor traffic in
property;
they could not hire out; they could not legally marry. . . they could
not
appeal from their master; they could be punished at will."
Chapter III, “The Hands of Ethiopia,” further expands Du Bois’s global
perspective. Much of this chapter appeared in a 1915 article for the
Atlantic Monthly under the title, “The African Roots of the War.” Here
Du Bois further develops his argument that modern capitalism has
generated much wealth off the backs of African peoples. For four
centuries Europe was the “chief support of that trade in human beings
which first and last robbed black Africa of a hundred million human
beings.” (512) In addition to building the Atlantic slave trade,
Europeans went to Africa to build their industry “on a new slavery”
depriving Africans of their land and mineral resources. Moreover, he
suggests
that white elites discovered that the white working classes, who were
starting
to rebel against class domination in Europe and America, could be held
in
check by convincing the latter that they were racially superior to
workers
of color across the globe. Here Du Bois anticipates the idea of the
“psychological wage of whiteness,” a view that would develop later in
his historical book, Black Reconstruction. He pursues this idea again
in Chapter 4 here.
In Chapter III, Du Bois, who is often considered the “father of
Pan-Africanism,” offers one of the first post-colonial analyses, and
with it some post-colonial visions. He is very concerned with freeing
Africa from European colonialism and with restoring control over
African resources to Africans. He was a major organizer of, and key
participant in, the four Pan-African conferences in 1919-1927, and
again in the fifth conference at the end of World War II.
Held in Manchester, England, that powerful 1945 conference hosted many
of
the leaders who were then working for, and in, a post-colonial Africa.
There
they celebrated the distinguished Du Bois for his anti-colonial
writings and
activism.
Du Bois begins Chapter IV, “Of Work and Wealth,” with reflections on
teaching history, economy, and sociology while he was at Atlanta
University. He articulates well the dilemma of the Black teacher who is
often asked by his students, “Do you trust white people?” As Du Bois
poignantly recounts it, the Black teacher usually feels that he must
dissimulate in reply: “Yet you rise and lie and say you do; you must
say it for her salvation and the world’s; you repeat that she must
trust them, that most white folks are honest, and all the while you are
lying and every level, silent eye there knows you are lying . . . .”
(524) The chapter proceeds to deal with how white workers have
driven black workers out of the new industrial unions, to the detriment
of
both groups. He notes the recent anti-black rioting by whites in East
St.
Louis, where many Blacks were killed and injured by white workers
fearful of losing jobs to black workers. Here Du Bois develops the
beginnings of a
critique of modern capitalism, a critique that shows how a small
capitalist elite gains wealth at the expense of the working class--with
the whites in that working class coming to view black workers as
competitors rather than allies. Why do they do this? Because white
workers have come to support the society's racial hierarchy, with its
privileges, opportunities, and resources for whites. They have adopted
as well the rationalizing ideology of white superiority. Again, Du Bois
notes that white workers have accepted the psychological wage of
whiteness. He then adds yet another the astute insight that “the
freeing
of the black slaves freed America,” by which he means that full U.S.
social
and economic development would not have been possible without the
abolition
of slavery. (533) He carries this insight further 778and argues that
white
elites’ abandonment of ownership of human beings must of necessity be
followed
by abandonment of elite ownership of the means of capitalistic
production
(such as factories), which are produced by workers working collectively.
Chapter V, “ ‘The Servant in the House,’ ” deals forcefully with the
ways in which many African Americans, including Du Bois’s mother and Du
Bois himself, have labored for centuries in various forms of menial
service for whites, for very low wages and suffering recurring insults
to human dignity. This servile condition Du Bois views as an
anachronism and “medieval barbarism” that survives into the modern
period. No one wants to be a servant, he suggests, but many want to
have servants. Why does this oppressive phenomenon of low-wage, menial
service persist? Du Bois suggests, in an aphoristic phrase, that U.S.
society still holds, consciously or unconsciously, to a “manure theory
of civilization.” This is the view that there is a subterranean area of
work which no civilized person should want to do, but which must be
done for
the larger society by “derelicts” and “half-men,” such as oppressed
African
Americans who have degraded into such servile positions by white
Americans.
U.S. “democracy,” he adds with acerbity, is built upon the foundation
of
menial labor.
In Chapter VI, “Of the Ruling of Men,” Du Bois develops additional
ideas in political sociology, particularly ideas on how the “ruling of
men” develops in societies. Over the course of history, he notes, we
have seen the expansion of human knowledge and political suffrage, with
growing numbers of the workers at the bottom of the society rebelling
against oppressed conditions. Thus, it was not the white
philanthropists who “freed the slaves.” Instead, enslaved African
Americans brought their own liberation “by armed rebellion, by sullen
refusal to work, by poison and murder, by running away to the North and
Canada, by giving point and powerful example to the agitation of the
abolitionists and by furnishing 200,000 soldiers and many times as many
civilian helpers in the Civil War.” (551) Once again, Du Bois
anticipates later historical scholarship that has made it clear how
African Americans have played a central role in their own social and
political liberation. They have been much more than the “victims” of
history.
Du Bois then develops a very strong argument for the importance of a
vital and vibrant multiracial democracy, one where multiculturalism is
prized and fostered. He argues that by leaving out some of the
people--as has been done in the partial democracy that is the United
States--we leave out “vast stores of wisdom.” Only by bringing in the
“whole experience” of the human race
can societies adequately meet the hard challenges of the unknown
future. The
expansion of political democracy not only meets the democratic ideals
often
professed in Western countries, but also makes it likely that much more
knowledge
and essential wisdom will become available for the longterm development
and
sustained growth of societies like the United States. The larger the
knowledge
pool, the more sustainable is the society. Du Bois adds that the
expansion
of political democracy should be accompanied by the expansion of
economic
democracy, which he believes workers will increasingly seek. There is
much
wisdom in the minds of workers and the general public that remains to
be
tapped.
In Chapter VII, “The Damnation of Women,” Du Bois yet again shows how
much his thinking was ahead of its time. This chapter is one of the
first
analyses ever by a male intellectual that pressed for greatly expanded
women’s
economic, political, and procreation rights. Du Bois was perhaps the
leading
male thinker of his day on this subject. He begins this chapter with a
highly original analysis of the system of gendered oppression in
Western societies like the United States. As he saw the treatment of
women in society, they were not really “beings, they were relations.”
Today as then, women are usually
described and positioned by their relationships to men--as wives,
mothers,
daughters, and sisters. Whatever their color, they exist “not for
themselves,
but for men.” Du Bois continues with a brief but insightful analysis of
childbearing and child rearing, one that parallels arguments of leading
white feminists such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman: “Only at the
sacrifice
of intelligence and the chance to do their best work can the majority
of
modern women bear children. This is the damnation of women.” (565) He
then
adds, forcefully and forthrightly, that a woman must have control of
her
own body, the “right of motherhood at her own discretion.” Such a view
was
revolutionary for his time. At an early point in U.S. feminism, this
Black
male intellectual and activist insisted not only on voting rights for
women,
a central cause of the period, but also on their economic and
procreation rights.
Perhaps most importantly, Du Bois accents in this essay the central
role of Black women in Black history and culture, both in African
societies and in the United States. He reviews the devastating impact
of slavery on these women. The “crushing weight of slavery” mean “no
legal marriage, no legal family, no legal control over children.”(567)
He writes provocatively and eloquently on the consequences of slavery:
“I shall forgive the white South much in its final judgement day: I
shall forgive its slavery, for slavery is a world-old habit; I shall
forgive its fighting for a well-lost cause . . . but one thing I shall
never forgive, neither in this world nor the world
to come: its wanton and continued and persistent insulting of the black
womanhood
which it sought and seeks to prostitute to its lust.” (569) After
reviewing
the lives and contributions of women such as Harriet Tubman, Phillis
Wheatley,
Mary Shadd, Louise De Mortie, and Kate Ferguson, Du Bois concludes with
a
review of the current scene, where Black women are key pillars in the
churches
and schools that are often the backbone of Black communities. Moreover,
anticipating
contemporary analyses of the degradation of the “black body” and of the
white
beauty myth, Du Bois celebrates the beauty of Black women: “Their
beauty,–their
dark and mysterious beauty of midnight eyes, crumpled hair, and soft,
full-featured
faces . . . . No other women on earth could have merged from the hell
of
force and temptation which once engulfed and still surrounds black
women
in America with half the modesty and womanliness that they retain.”
(576)
In Chapter VIII, Du Bois continues with ever more high-level insights
into contemporary societies. In this chapter, titled “The Immortal
Child,”
the focus is on children and education. Du Bois begins with a
discussion
of the contributions of Europeans and Americans who had mixed white and
African ancestry, then moves to a discussion of how Black parents raise
their
children to prepare them for dealing with racism. This is followed by a
probing
assessment of the general importance of education. Here he underscores
the
importance of extended educations for all people, once again making the
point
that a society cannot afford to ignore the knowledge and wisdom
developed
by ordinary people. Central to this essay is an insight that others
have
articulated but few have put so eloquently: “If we realized that
children
are the future, that immortality is the present child, that no
education
which educates can possibly be too costly, then we know that the menace
of
Kaiserism [Germany in World War I] which called for the expenditure of
more
than 332 thousand millions of dollars was not a whit more pressing than
the
menace of ignorance, and that no nation tomorrow can call itself
civilized
which does not give every single human being college and vocational
training
free and under the best teaching force procurable for love or money.”
(591)
Thinking “outside the box” once again, Du Bois not only recognizes the
importance
of education for all Americans, including those who are victims of
racial
oppression, but also accents the importance of a multicultural
education
that teaches children that racial hatreds not only degrade and kill
others,
but also “crucify souls like their own.” Here, as in Chapter II, Du
Bois
accents the costs of racism for white Americans. He views comprehensive
education
across all social lines as one major solution for racial hatreds and
oppression.
He notes that nowhere in the Western world is education seen this way,
an
evaluation that still holds true today.
In Chapter IX, titled “Of Beauty and Death,” Du Bois contrasts the
ugliness of racial oppression with the beauty of the physical
landscape, using lyrical sentences to describe that landscape. Du Bois
raises the question of why those burdened by racism cannot flee to the
areas of great natural beauty, and returns with the answer given by
Black acquaintances–Jim Crow segregation makes travel too difficult and
dangerous. White-generated ugliness can be seen in the blatant Jim Crow
segregation of the U.S. army during the World War I period and in the
many racial riots by white Americans against African Americans in that
same period. This pain and ugliness is contrasted with the beauty of
such physical phenomena as the sunset and moonlight on Montego Bay and
with the laughter and loving of African Americans enjoying a Harlem
night. “And then–the Veil. It drops as drops the night on southern
seas–vast, sudden, unanswering. There is Hate behind it, and Cruelty
and Tears. . . .
And yet it hangs there, this Veil, between Then and Now, between Pale
and Colored and Black and White–between You and Me.” (607). Once again,
he returns to the metaphor of the veil. African Americans are
enshrouded by the veil of white racism.
In Chapter X, titled “The Comet,” Du Bois concludes Darkwater
with a change of pace--a science fiction parable of chilling relevance
to the present day. The tale is set in New York City, whose population
is almost entirely wiped out as a comet hits the city. A working-class
Black man named Jim is not killed. He is a bank messenger who was saved
because he was sent below ground to look at bank records. He comes out
into the streets to discover that everyone in sight is dead. As he
traverses the city, he rescues a wealthy young white women, Julia, from
an upper floor of her building, where she had been saved because she
was in a photographic darkroom when the comet hit.
Crossing the city in her luxury car, they find no survivors. Returning
to
her father’s office tower, Jim and Julia go up to the roof to look out
over
the city. In the face of what appears to be the end of the world, they
interact
more as human beings than in terms of the social positions they have
long
inhabited. Commenting on the meaninglessness of categorizing rich and
poor,
Julia says, “how foolish our human distinctions seem--now.” He replies,
“Yes–I
was not– human, yesterday.” She adds, “And your people were not my
people
. . . but today–“ He adds, “Death, the leveler!” Du Bois then adds the
comment
that Jim “was no longer a thing apart, a creature below . . . but her
Brother
Humanity incarnate . . . .” (619).
However, as the protagonists move toward each other with outstretched
arms, they hear the honking of a car horn below. Soon, two white men
come
up in the elevator to the roof. One is the Julia’s father, who tells
her
that only New York City has been destroyed. Seeing Jim, her father
snarls,
“It’s–a–nigger–Julia! Has he–has he dared–“ Julia looks at Jim, drops
her
eyes, and replies to her father that Jim only dared to rescue her. Then
her
father throws some money at Jim. A gathering white crowd whispers that
they
should “lynch the damned–“ Someone adds, “Well, what do you think of
that?
. . . of all New York, just a white girl and a nigger.” (621)
Du Bois concludes the chapter and his book with a poem called “A Hymn
to The Peoples,” which ends with these words, “Save us, World-Spirit,
from our lesser selves! Grant us that war and hatred cease. Reveal our
souls in
every race and hue! Help us, O. Human God, in this Thy Truce, To make
Humanity
divine!” (623)
Interestingly, most white reviewers of the book could not see past what
they viewed as its “hateful” and anti-white stance. They criticized its
“bitterness” and its “teaching of violence,” neither of which
sentiments
are to be found in the book. Too tied up in their racial
straightjackets,
most white readers missed the many astute and consequential points in
the
book. Moreover, a few reviewers chided Du Bois for writing in language
that
was above the heads of ordinary Black people, yet they were off the
mark.
Many ordinary African Americans sent in two dollars to get a copy, much
to the amazement of these analysts. Poor and working-class
African
Americans eagerly sought after a book that, it seems likely, many could
barely read. The reason was obvious. Du Bois was now a respected leader
of African Americans, and he articulated well the experience and views
of
most African Americans whatever their social class position.
Du Bois was an authentic American genius. He was a major sociologist
and historian, a leading civil rights activist, an essayist, a poet,
and a novelist of originality. Viewing his many talents and
achievements, it seems that no American has ever contributed so much to
his country. As a founder of, and a key innovator in the NAACP (he was
founding editor of The Crisis), he
worked for decades to see the Black civil rights movement rise to power
from
the 1940s to the 1960s. Indeed, word of his death in Africa came on the
day
of the most famous civil rights demonstration in US history, the March
on
Washington in August 1963. In addition, Du Bois pioneered in many areas
of
social science scholarship. He undertook the first major research study
on
the U.S. slave trade (his doctoral dissertation published by Harvard
University
press), developed the first book-length urban field study in U.S.
social
science (The Philadelphia Negro), wrote a major revisionist history of
Reconstruction
(Black Reconstruction), developed the first important whiteness study
(Chapter
II here), and wrote much in the way of pathbreaking Pan-Africanist and
post-colonial
analysis.
Moreover, unlike virtually all white leaders of his day, Du Bois was an
active anti-racist in thought, writings, and action, and, unlike
virtually all male leaders of his day, he was an early and strong
feminist. What other American has such a record? Du Bois may well be
the greatest American of
all time. Darkwater repeatedly shows that Du Bois saw much
farther
and deeper than most contemporaries on matters of what are now called
“race,
gender, and class.” Indeed, many of his insights are ahead of our time.
I will conclude this introduction with one of his predictions. After
assessing the great destructiveness of World War I--which he sees as
substantially an avaricious struggle among European powers for colonial
control over the darker peoples of the world–Du Bois boldly anticipates
a global war of the races. In this passage from Chapter II, he speaks
of the world’s majority watching the so-called “world war” of the
Europeans:
“But what of the darker world that watches? Most men belong to this
world. With Negro and Negroid, East Indian, Chinese, and Japanese they
form two-thirds of the population of the world. A belief in humanity is
a belief in colored men. If the uplift of mankind must be done by men,
then the destinies of this world will rest ultimately in the hands of
darker nations.
What, then, is this dark world thinking? It is thinking that as wild
and awful as this shameful war was, it is nothing to compare with that
fight for freedom which black and brown and yellow men must and will
make unless their oppression and humiliation and insult at the hands of
the White World cease. The Dark World is going to submit to its present
treatment just as long as it must and not one moment later.” (507, his
italics)
Joe R. Feagin
Graduate Research Professor
University of Florida
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Du Bois, Darkwater, and
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One's Time
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Liberation
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