Viewing Page: 1 | 2 | 3 Next >>>

Du Bois and the Question of the Color Line: Race and Class in the Age of Globalization

By Maulana Karenga

When we engage W.E.B. Du Bois's work and thought to extract useful insights and develop intellectual and social initiatives based on these, we unavoidably must deal with his concept of the color line and the role he assigned it in African and human history (Butler, 2000; Fontenot, 2001; Juguo, 2001; Rabaka, 2001). The concept of the color-line refers essentially to the role of race and racism in history and society. But of necessity, for Du Bois, it requires a multidimensional analysis which identifies and seeks to understand the intersection of race and class as both modes of domination and modes of resistance on the national and international level. Du Bois engages the questions of race, racial domination and racial exploitation with the well-known proposition that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line." Although this proposition gains prominence in the forethought of the Souls of Black Folk (1903), Du Bois had already introduced the concept in a lecture at the third annual meeting of the American Negro Academy in 1900 titled "The Present Outlook for the Dark Races of Mankind." His purpose, he states (1900b: 47), was to consider "the problem of the color line, not simply as a national and personal question but rather in its larger world aspect in time and space." He seeks to critically examine the question of "what part is the color line destined to play in the 20th century?" It is a critical task which we must engage, he tells his audience, for "the secret of social progress is wide and thorough understanding of the social forces which move and modify your age." And there is for him no doubt that race as a bio-social category and construction and the racist thought and practice which it produces are among those social forces which will "move and modify (our) age" (Lewis, 1993; Zamir, 1995).

After identifying and discussing major problems of the world, Du Bois concludes (1900b: 54) that his critical survey of these problems "confirms the proposition with which I started-the world problem of the 20th century is the problem of the color line-the question of the relation of the advanced races of men who happened to be white to the great majority of the undeveloped or half-developed nations of mankind who happen to be yellow, brown or black.." Du Bois argued that this relationship is essentially one of domination, exploitation and "narrow opportunity" for development for the people of color. In his "Address to the Nations of the World" on behalf of the first Pan-African Congress, Du Bois repeats his proposition and further defines the nature of the problem. He states that "the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, the question of how far differences of race-which show themselves chiefly in the color of skin and the texture of the hair-will hereafter be made the basis of denying to over half the world the right of sharing to their utmost ability the opportunities and privileges of modern civilization" (1900a: 125).

If on one hand Du Bois's proposition calls our attention to the gross inequities of power, wealth, opportunity and access between whites and the majority of the peoples of the world, it also raises the problematic of the response of the oppressed of the world and the impact this will have on human society and history. Du Bois is right to argue that the oppressed, of necessity, will rise up in resistance and wage fierce and heroic struggles for liberation and higher levels of human life. Indeed, he anticipates wars of liberation more ferocious than the imperialist wars of conquest, suppression, colonialism, and settlerism. Thus, he states that "as wild and awful as this shameful war [W.W.I] 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 a moment more" (1920: 28; Du Bois's italics).

Du Bois anticipates here the Vietnam liberation struggle which ruptures the continuity and confidence of European dominance and the subsequent liberation struggles in Africa, Asia, Latin America and even within the U.S. at that time of fundamental turning, the decade of the Reaffirmation of the 60s (Karenga, 2002a: 183ff). And he also anticipates in his dire warning the wars of state terrorism and oppressed peoples' fierce response to them, using whatever weapons and means they can, arguing security for all or none for any, justice for all or no peace for any and freedom for all or ongoing war, disruption and insecurity for everyone (Ahmad, 2002).

Certainly, the current and ongoing relevance of the color line concept is expressed in how it provides critical and comparative insight into one of the most pressing problems of our times-the practices and processes of globalization (Lusane, 1997; Martin & Shumann, 1997). For globalization, regardless of its disguises and deceptive discourse on democracy and the spreading of civilization and technology, can be usefully understood as a color line project. In fact, it can be seen as a current expression of white supremacy with an enhanced technological capacity to impose itself on the world. In a word, globalization expresses itself as a racialist global project of coercive homogenization of the peoples of the world, politically, economically and culturally, with European peoples as both the central power and paradigm (Munford, 2001). In such an asymmetrical project, Europeans are, of course, the principal beneficiaries, and the peoples of color are the victims and bearers of the burden and the costs, as Du Bois contends in his color-line proposition.

The color line is established when Europe problematizes the existence, meaning, color, worth, and status of the peoples of color. Du Bois speaks to this problematization in the preface to autobiographical work Dusk of Dawn, saying, "My life had its significance and its only deep significance because it was part of a Problem; but that problem was, as I continue to think, the central problem of the world's democracies and so the Problem of the future world" (1940: vii-viii). To problematize the existence and lives of peoples of color, Europe constructs a bio-social identity called race (Gordon, 2000a). Du Bois's categories of "color" and "color-line" are synonyms of race. Du Bois tells us that with the construction of the concept of race "'color' became in the world's thought synonymous with inferiority" (1915: 362). It became a designation of devaluation, degradation and domination. For race stripped of all its pseudo-scientific claims is essentially a socio-biological category used to assign human worth and social status using whites as the paradigm (Karenga, 2002a: 306). In such a construction, the closer one is to the paradigm, the higher one's human worth and social status. And likewise, the farther a person or people is away from that paradigm, the lower their human worth and social status.

The system of social practice which is organized around this concept of race on the national and international level is racism. It is important here to distinguish racial prejudice and racism. For racial prejudice is an attitude of hostility and hatred toward persons and peoples based on negative assumptions about biology and culture. But "racism is the imposition of this attitude as social policy and social practice. In other words, racism is a system of denial, deformation and destruction of a people's history, humanity and right to freedom based exclusively or primarily on the specious concept of race" (Ibid., 305).

Racism expresses itself in three basic ways. First, it is a violent act of imposition. As a mode of domination, racism is defined above all by its violent character, its disruption and progressive destruction of a people's life ¾whether it is called colonialism, imperialism, the Holocaust of enslavement, neo-colonialism, settlerism, occupation, or globalization (Fanon, 1968; Cesaire, 1972; Cabral, 1969). Secondly, racism expresses itself as ideology or more precisely an ideology of justification of the imposition. It is an ideology which ranges from the rawest of biological, religious and cultural absurdities to elaborate intellectual and pseudo-intellectual projects masquerading as social science. Indeed, Du Bois recognizes this ideological aspect of racism calling it "race fiction." He also calls attention to how "it has for years held back the progress of the social sciences" employed in the service of domination (1944: 422), and calls for new social sciences, indeed new human sciences (Gordon, 2000b). He states that "the social sciences from the beginning were deliberately used as instruments to prove the inferiority of the majority of the people of the world, who were being used as slaves for the comfort and culture of the masters." He criticizes history for its dehistoricization of African people; biology for its exaggeration of physical differences; economics for its inability to "talk straight on colonial imperialism"; and psychology for "the shame of its intelligence tests and its record of 'conclusions' during the First World War." And he calls for a "wide dissemination of truth" to counter the ideological and justificatory aspect of racism (1944: 423). He especially stresses the need for "deliberate and organized action in the front where race fiction is being used to prolong economic inequality and injustice in the world." Moreover, he calls for "a modern missionary movement, not in the interest of religious dogma, but to dissipate the economic illiteracy which clouds modern thought." Here Du Bois stresses the need for a political economy which demonstrates the intersection of race and class in the calculus of global domination, and suggests a "union.across the race line" to end exploitation and domination on the national and international levels (Ibid., 424).

Finally, racism expresses itself as institutional arrangement, as structures and processes which promote and perpetuate the imposition and ideology. The educational system, the media, the courts, the legislative bodies, and the economic structures from small businesses to transnational corporations all contribute to the promotion and perpetuation of systemic racism. The practices of transnational structures-such as corporations and now the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the World Trade Organization, etc.-show the prophetic character of Du Bois's perception of the intersection of race, class and national interests of white nations over and against the interests of the world's peoples of color. For, as noted above, the process of globalization has its roots in the classical period of imperialist expansion (Raudzens, 1999). What is definitely new is an enhanced technology at various levels, which increases European people's capacity for domination and coercive homogenization in the world, with the USA as the single superpower.

It is in this context of the racist problematization of his very presence, and of the lives of the world's peoples of color, that Du Bois comes into critical consciousness and takes up the cause of the "darker peoples of the world" in terms of both racial and cultural imperialism. He states that "Had it not been for the race problem early thrust on me and enveloping me, I should have probably been an unquestioning worshipper at the shrine of the social order and economic development into which I was born." But he is constantly confronted with "the truth in the world," and at the core of this knowledge of the world were "the problems of racial and cultural contacts" (1920: 572f).

Du Bois's concern with the color line as a central problem of the 20th century finds its newest expression in the 21st century, then, in what we might understand not only as continuing European domination and exploitation of peoples of color, but also and more than ever as the Europeanization of human culture and consciousness. And it is this imposition of views and values, as well as political and economic practices and projects, which has provoked such sustained and severe responses from various segments of the communities of color around the world (Zepezauer, 2002a; Ahmad, 2002; Karenga, 2002b; Barber, 1996). By the Europeanization of human consciousness and culture I mean the systematic invasion and effective transformation of the cultural consciousness and practice of the various peoples of color of the world by Europeans (whites) (Karenga, 2002a: 25f). This is achieved essentially through technology, education, and the media, and yields three basic results. First, the process produces a progressive loss and replacement of the historical memories of peoples of color. Second, it yields the progressive disappreciation of themselves and their culture as a result of a conscious and unconscious assessment of themselves using European standards. And finally, it encourages the progressive adoption of a Eurocentric view not only of themselves, but also of each other and the world. "This in turn leads to damage and distortion of their own humanity and the increasing degeneration of the cultural diversity and exchange which gave humanity its rich variousness and internal creative challenge."

Here it is important to recognize the centrality of culture as both a ground and support of freedom and an instrument of suppression and domination (Cabral, 1973). Du Bois recognizes this, arguing that at first he did not question "what the white world was doing, its goals and ideals," which he "had not doubted were quite right." His concern was the white world's rejection of him in spite of his ability. But later he would realize how this concept and practice of European civilization presented him with the paradoxes of freedom and enslavement, ideals of peace and realities of war, humanism and racism, universal man and racial stereotypes. In a word, as Fanon would later describe it (1966: 252), the paradox of a Europe "where they are never done talking of Man, yet murder men everywhere they find them, at the corner of every one of their streets, in all the corners of the globe." Fanon goes on to argue what Du Bois could easily endorse, i.e., a need for us to "reconsider the question of mankind" (254f). And at the core of this proposition is the question of "the Third World starting a new history of Man," free of the crimes against humanity, the stratification, and "the bloodthirsty tensions fed by classes.the racial hatreds, slavery, exploitation, and above all the bloodless genocide which consisted in the setting aside of fifteen thousand millions [sic] of men." This "setting aside" of people is of course the racist construction of a color bar-denying and diminishing life choices and life conditions of dignity and decency and narrowing the road to maximum human freedom and human flourishing.

In his classic essay "The African Roots of War," Du Bois (1915) poses a series of paradoxes inherent in the imperialist expansion of his time which we now call globalization. These paradoxes not only reflect the relevance of race in a critical understanding of the project, but also the intersection of race and class, color and condition, and place and power in this process.

Peace and Imperialist Expansion. The first paradox is the pursuit of peace in the midst of imperialist expansion. He notes that as a result of World War I, Europe was planning "the disarmament of Europe and a European international world police" (1915: 370). And yet while discussing its own peace, Europe was conducting, provoking and supporting various forms of imperialist war and violence in the rest of the world. Du Bois asks then "Must the rest of the world be left naked to the inevitable horror of war, especially when we know that it is directly in this outer circle of races, and not in the inner European household, that the real causes of present European fighting are to be found?"

Du Bois seeks to stress here the European struggle among themselves for control over the human and material resources of peoples of color, and to discuss what it means to Africans and the world (Keene, 2001). These are for him wars of domination and exploitation, regardless of the convenient appeals to democracy, civilization, and other self-congratulatory categories European nations claim. Surely, the colonial and imperialist wars of the 20th  century and their continuation in the 21st century in various forms, most notably in our time as the so-called war against terrorism, reaffirm Du Bois's insight that peace for European peoples did not mean peace for peoples of color. On the contrary, war against the peoples of color was perceived as a way Europeans could establish peace and advantage for themselves, and whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or the Middle East, this tends even today to hold true (Blum, 1995). Moreover, the concern for control of resources such as oil and other strategic materials and strategic space has led not only to an ongoing series of so-called low-intensity wars, but also to sustained brutal suppression in Palestine, war in Afghanistan, and currently the imminent threat of war with Iraq, in spite of claims of a war against terrorism and for civilization in the interest of humankind (Zunes, 2002). But Du Bois warns the European powers that they cannot have peace just for themselves and that peoples of color will fight for freedom, justice and equality until it is achieved in the world. Indeed, he states "We shall not drive war from this world until we treat them as free and equal citizens in a world democracy of all races and nations" (1915: 368).

Democratic despotism. The second paradox Du Bois identifies as that of "democratic despotism," an ongoing brutal domination masked in the disguise and discourse of democracy. He notes, "It is this paradox which allows in America the most rapid advance of democracy to go hand-in-hand in its very centers with increased aristocracy and hatred toward darker races, and which excuses and defends an inhumanity that does not shrink from the public burning of human beings" (1915: 363). He concludes that in spite of white American and general European conversation about bringing democracy to the world, racial domination disguised as the pursuit of democracy domestically and internationally is the regular reality. And certainly, nowhere was this clearer than in the domestic policies of the USA, South Africa and Brazil, and in the colonial policies of the white nations of the world (Marx, 1998). But also in recent times, globalization and increasing corporate power in the USA has certainly diminished or at least made problematic any serious claims to democracy for all (Martin and Shumann, 1997; Greider, 1993).

This insight into the "paradox of democratic despotism" prefigures Malcolm X's (1965: 26) concept of African Americans as "victims of democracy" rather than its beneficiaries given the racist character of U.S. society. In fact, he defines this form of democracy as "nothing but disguised hypocrisy." For Malcolm, then, U.S. society was essentially a herrenvolk democracy, a ruling-race democracy in which the key benefits society offered were essentially for the ruling race. Du Bois notes that in such a context on both the national and international levels, cross-racial alliances and common struggles are undermined. For both white owners and workers benefit from an enhanced life of comfort and convenience made possible through the heightened exploitation of the human and material resources of peoples of color around the world.

Viewing Page: 1 | 2 | 3 Next >>>