W. E. B. Du Bois and the Reconstruction of the 'Negro'

W. E. B. 듀보이스와 '니그로'의 재구성

Quite arguably, W. E. B. Du Bois is the first figure in the history of black nationalism who engaged most persistently and systematically with the dominant ideology of racism and white supremacy. It is not too much to say that, by contending with the Eurocentric but taken-for-granted concept of the 'Negro' in the turn of the century, Du bois has laid the theoretical and ideological cornerstone of postcolonialism today. But his concept of race varied over time and was even contradictory in the same writings. The early Du Bois defined race as something historically made rather than biologically given and determined. Yet he didn't utterly deny the significance of physical traits and skin color in constructing racial identity. His notion of the 'Negro' was not unambiguous, either. While drawing on the 'soul' of 'black folk' to undermine the Eurocentric dichotomy of white/mind and black/body, Du Bois argued that there is some kind of 'spiritual' differences between whites and blacks, differences that are essentially inherent and hereditary in the 'Negro.' Such essentialist notion of race and the 'Negro' was on the wane in the later Du Bois, especially after his encounter with Marxism. He came to think of race merely as a discourse of racism that can be subverted and even appropriated for anti-racist practices. Following the Marxist assumption that 'the color line' is a class conflict on the international level, Du Bois contended that the 'Negro' is an outcome of slavery which is in turn a subsystem of Western capitalism. He also argued that, since the 'Negro' is not a biological essence but a sociocultural formation, the identity of the 'Negro' can and must be reconstructed according to historical change. For Du Bois, therefore, the resistance against colonialism and capitalism became a resistance against racism. This is why his Pan-African movement shifted its gear from the American program in the initial phase to a truly 'Afrocentric' and socialist one.