Conceptualizing a du boisian philosophy of education: Toward a model for african-american education

Educational Theory

Volumn 49, Issue 3, 1999, Pages 359-379

  Alridge, Derrick P ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 5844243892     PISSN: 00132004     EISSN: 17415446     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-5446.1999.00359.x     Document Type: Article

References (53)

1. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois: A Soliloquy on Viewing My Life from the Last Decade of Its First Century (New York: International Publishers, 1968), 25.
2. Du Bois's "talented tenth" represented the best-educated of the Negro population who would take up the banner of leadership and lead the Negro masses to a better social, economic, and political reality in America. Generally, Du Bois believed that the "talented tenth" would be college-trained Negroes. See W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth," in Booker T. Washington et al., The Negro Problem (New York: James Pott and Company, 1903), 33.
3. This study focuses on, but is not limited to, Du Bois's thinking during and after the 1930s. I focus on the 1930s and after mainly because this is the most ignored period in the study of Du Bois's thinking. Moreover, the 1930s exemplify a watershed decade in Du Bois's life in which the evolution of his thinking most cogently and comprehensively speaks to contemporary social, economic, and political issues in America. See Thomas C. Hoit, "The Political Uses of Alienation: W.E.B. Du Bois on Politics, Race, and Culture, 1903-1940," American Quarterly 42, no. 2 (June 1990): 318.
4. David Levering Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: Biography of a Race 1868-1919 (New York: Henry Holt, 1993), 39 and W.E.B. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1940), 13.
5. use the term "Negro" in reference to African-Americans periodically throughout the essay because Du Bois used it in his writings and the general public used the term during the 1930s. The use of the term in its historical context, I believe, gives the reader a better feel for the time period. When discussing contemporary issues dealing with African-Americans, I use the term "African-American" or "black" instead of "Negro" For a discussion of the terms "Negro" and "African-American," see Mary Francis Berry and John Blassingame, Long Memory: The Black Experience in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 1982), 389-96.
6. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, 107, 125, 155.
7. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, Volume I (1944; reprint, Transaction Publishers, 1996), 98-99 and 114-17. Also, for discussion of how the color "black" became associated with negative stereotypes, see David Roediger, The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class (London: Verso, 1993), 133-34; John W. Blassingame, The Slave Community: Plantation Life in the Antebellum South (New York: Oxford University Press, 1979), 227; and Gordon W. Ailport, The Nature of Prejudice: A Comprehensive and Penetrating Study of the Origin and Nature of Prejudice (New York: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1958), 92.
8. John P. Davis, "A Survey of the Problems of the Negro under the New Deal," The Journal of Negro Education 1 (1936): 5; Raymond Wolters, Negroes and the Great Depression: The Problem of Economic Recovery (Connecticut: Greenwood, 1970), 8; and E. Franklin Frazicr, The Negro in the United States (Toronto: Macmillan, 1957), 395-96.
9. Myrdal, An American Dilemma, 523-24 and Berry and Blassingame, Long Memory, 172-76.
10. For discussions and thorough analyses of the Du Bois/Washington debate and their relationship, see James Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860-1935 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1988), 104-8 and Lewis, Biography of a Race, 1868-1919, 238-64.
11. Historian Kevin Gaines argues that the term "uplift" has had various meanings during different points in African-American history. Education, he argues, has generally been regarded as the key to Negro liberation. For the purpose of this essay, I use uplift to mean the liberation and empowerment of the Negro masses and the improvement of their collective social, economic, and political conditions. See Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1996), 1-2.
12. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Hampton Idea," in The Education of Black People: Ten Critiques, 1906-1960, ed. Herbert Aptheker (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1973), 15.
13. See Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South, 34-37.
14. The term "race woman" or "race man" refers to Negro women and men who dedicated their lives to the uplift of the Negro race. Du Bois and other Negro leaders occasionally used the term.
15. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Damnation of Women," in W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader, ed. David Levering Lewis (New York: Henry Holt, 1995), 311.
16. See Joy James, The Profeminist Politics of W.E.B. Du Bois with Respect to Anna Julia Cooper and Ida B. Wells Bamett, in W.E.B. Du Bois: On Race and Culture, ed. Bernard Bell, Emily Grosholz, and James Stewart (New York: Routledge, 19961 142-60.
17. Elizabeth Alexander, "'We Must Be about Our Father's Business:' Anna Julia Cooper and the In corporation of the Nineceenth-Century African-American Woman Intellectual" Journal of Women in Culture and Society 20, no. 21 (1995): 336-39.
18. Charles Lemert, "Anna Julia Cooper: The Colored Woman's Office," in The Voice of Anna Julia Cooper: Including A Voice from the South and Other Important Essays, Papers, and Letters, ed. Charles Lemert and Esme Bhan (New York: Rowman and Littlefield. 1998), 9.
19. Anna Julia Cooper, A Voice from the South (1892; reprint, New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 57. Cooper's enthusiasm for and advocacy of education for Negro women and for the Negro masses was an integral component of her educational thinking. Not only were her educational views reflected in her work at M Street High School, but as President of Frelinghusin University in Washington, D.C., she focused on educating poor Negroes and the Negro masses.
20. Anna Julia Cooper to W.E.B. Du Bois, 31 December 1929, in The Correspondence of W.E.B. Du Bois, Vol. 1, Selections, 1877-1929, ed Herbert Aptheker (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1973), 411.
21. Alexander, "'We Must Be about Our Father's Business'" 337.
22. Cooper, A Voice from the South, 135.
23. From the postbelium period through the mid-1900s, the issue of what to do about the abysmal social, economic, political, and educational conditions of Negroes became known as the "Negro problem.".
24. Ronald Butchart, "'Outthinking and Outflanking the Owners of the World': A Historiography of the African American Struggle for Education" History of Education Quarterly 28. no. 3 (1988): 340.
25. Agnes M. Roache, "Carter G. Woodson and the Development of Transformative Scholarship," in Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge, and Action: Human and Contemporary Perspec tives, ed. James Banks (New York: Teachers College Press, 1996), 92.
26. Contemporary educators and scholars usually attribute the Afrocentric view in education to Molcfi Asante and his concept of"Afrocentricity." Asante defines Afrocentricity and Afrocentric education as the idea of placing Africa and African people at the center of one's worldview. For a detailed explanation of "Afrocentricity" see Molefi Asante, The Afrocentric Idea (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987), 6-10. However, Du Bois was advocating an "Afro-centric" perspective decades before Asante. In fact, in a report on the scope of his proposed Encyclopedia Africana, Du Bois used the term "Afro-centric" to describe his historical and educational perspective. See W.E.B. Du Bois, "Provisional Draft: Not for General Distribution; Proposed Plans for an Encyclopedia Africana" Rare Books Room: Pennsylvania State University, 1961 and "For Cooperation Toward an Encyclopedia Africana"Info. Report#2, Accra, Ghana (September 1962.) Also, see Wilson Moses Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), 1-17.
27. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Field and Function of the Negro College," in Aptheker, The Education of Black People, 95.
28. Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro (1933; reprint, Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1993), xiii.
29. In terms of addressing the negative imagery and history about Negroes during the 1930s and during their lifetimes, Du Bois and Woodson were both crusaders in disseminating the "truth" about Negro history and life. During the 1930s, in particular, I believe that they both were working out an "Afrocentric" and African-centered perspective that paved the way for contemporary Afrocentric education and Af rocentricity. For this reason, I have attempted to show their merging of views during the 1930s as a hint of the Afrocentric and Black Studies movement that would develop three decades later.
30. See Robert Westbrook, John Dewey and American Democracy (London: Cornell University Press, 1991), 446-47 and Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, 234-37. A comprehensive analysis of Du Bois and Dewey is beyond die scope of this essay. For instance, there are some very interesting points that need to be discussed about Du Bois's and Dewey's ideas on pragmatism, democracy, and education. In a future paper, I intend to examine these points in detail.
31. John Dewey, "Democracy and Educational Administration" in John Dewey: The Later Works 1925-1953, ed. To Ann Boydston (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987), 218.
32. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Gift of Black Folk (1924; reprint, New York: AMS Press, 1971), 257-58.
33. In an important work on American pragmatism, Cornel West discusses the influences of William James's pragmatisnvon Du Bois's thinking. Calling Du Bois a "Jamesian Organic Intellectual" West argues that Du Bois was "grounded in and nourished by" American pragmatism. See The American Evasion of Philosophy: A Genealogy of Pragmatism (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989), 138-50. Clearly, Du Bois was influenced by pragmatism, but I would argue that the breadth of his educational thought is grounded in the African-American and African experience, particularly in the 1920s when he began to move away from using the social sciences as a strategy to solve the Negro problem. Ultimately, Du Bois realized that pragmatism and social science could not answer the needs or address, in totality, the situation of American Negroes. Negro uplift, he began to realize, would have to be grounded in the culture, history, and life experiences of people of African descent. See, for example, W.E.B. Du Bois's response to the lynching of Sam Hose in Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, 222. Du Bois stated "first, one could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Negroes were lynched, murdered and starved; and secondly, there was no such definite demand for scientific work of the sort that I was doing.".
34. Du Bois, The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, 148.
35. Mwalimu Shujaa, "Education and Schooling: You Can Have One without the Other" in Too Much Schooling Too Little Education: A Paradox of Black Life in White Societies, ed. Mwalimu Shujaa (Trenton, N.J.: Africa World Press, 1994), 29.
36. See, for example, Molefi Asante, The Afrocentric Idea, 3-18; James Banks, "African-American Scholarship and the Evolution of Multicultural Education," The Journal of Negro Education 61, no. 3 (1992): 273-85;Nah Dove, "African Womanism: An Afrocentric Theory," Journal of Black Studies 28, no. 5 (1998): 517-25; Frederick D. Dunn, "African-American Philosophy and Philosophies of Education: Their Roots, Aims, and Relevance for the 21st Century" Ed.D. diss., Columbia University Teachers College, 1991, 10-56; Beverly Gordon, "The Necessity of African-American Epistemology for Educational Theory and Practice"The Journal of Negro Educational, no. 3 (1990): 101; Asa G. Milliard, III, SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind (Gainesville, Fla.: Makare Publishing, 1998); Maulana Karenga, Introduction to Black Studies (Los Angeles: The University Sankore Press, 1993), 34-56, 211-55; and Elleni Tedia, Sankofa-African Thought and Education (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 80-108.
37. Du Bois never clearly articulated a cohesive and comprehensive educational philosophy or model. Moreover, with the exception of a few dissertations that cover themes in Du Bois's educational thought, no works have extrapolated from Du Bois's thinking to create an educational model or set of principles. On e goal of this essay is to begin to conceptualize and present a set of unifying principles for African-American education. In future writings, I intend to further explicate and develop the model and to demonstrate how it might be operationalized in African-American and American educational practice and policy.
38. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (1903; reprint, New York: Dover Publications, 1994), 2.
39. James B. Stewart, "Deciphering theThought of W.E.R. Dubois: A Thematic Approach, "Journal of Black Studies, forthcoming Fall 2000, 8. DulBois continued to write about and allude to the double-consciousness theme in his writing until his later life. For example, see the character of Matthew Toivns in W.E.B. DU Bois, Dark Princess (Jackson, Miss.: Banner Books, 1928). For further discussion of double-consciousness in Du Bois's later works, see James B. Stewart, "Psychie Duality of Afro-Americans in the Novels of W.E.B. Du Bois," Phylon 43, no. 2 (June 1983: 93-107.
40. Lewis, Biography of a Race, 281.
41. See, again, footnote number 26.
42. W.E.B Du Bois, "The College-bred Community" in Aptheker, The Education of Black People, 38.
43. Du Bois, Dusk of Dawn, 241 and W.E.B. Du Bois, "A Negro Nation Within a Nation" Current History, 42 (June 1935): 268-70.
44. Patricia A. Edwards, "Before and After School Desegregation: African-American Parents' Involvement in Schools," in Beyond Desegregation: The Politics of Quality in African-Americans' Schooling, ed. Mwalimu Shujaa (California: Corwin Press, Inc., 1996), 146 and Nsenga Warfieid-Coppock, "The Rites of Passage: Extending Education into the African-American Community" in Shujaa, Too Much Schooling Too Little Education, 380.
45. W.E.B. Du Bois, "Education and Work" in Aptheker, The Education of Black People, 77-78.
46. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Talented Tenth: Memorial Address" in Lewis, W.E.B. Du Bois: A Reader, 348.
47. See Manning Marable, Black Leadership (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), xiv-xv.
48. See W.E.B. Du Bois, "Whither Now and Why" in Aptheker, The Education of Black People, 150-53.
49. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Field and Function of the Negro College" in Aptheker, The Education of Black People, 88.
50. See, for example, Tedia, Sankofa, 79-108, 112-48.
51. The Autobiography of W.E.B. Du Bois, 385-95.
52. W.E.B. Du Bois, "The Freedom to Learn" in W.E.B. Du Bois Speaks: Speeches and Addresses 1920-1963, ed. Philip Foner (New York: Pathfinder, 1991), 230.
53. Martin Luther King, Jr., "Honoring Dr. Du Bois" in Black Titan W.E.B Du Bois: An Anthology by the Editors of Freedomways, ed. John Heinrik Clark et al. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1970), 176-77.