Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education Studies of Migration, Integration, Equity, and Cultural Survival ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/hdim20 From the poverty of culture to the power of politics: the evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois Kyle Beckham & Shirin Vossoughi To cite this article: Kyle Beckham & Shirin Vossoughi (2020) From the poverty of culture to the power of politics: the evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois, Diaspora, Indigenous, and Minority Education, 14:2, 75-86, DOI: 10.1080/15595692.2020.1733958 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2020.1733958 Published online: 24 May 2020. Submit your article to this journal View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=hdim20 DIASPORA, INDIGENOUS, AND MINORITY EDUCATION 2020, VOL. 14, NO. 2, 75–86 https://doi.org/10.1080/15595692.2020.1733958 From the poverty of culture to the power of politics: the evolution of W.E.B. Du Bois Kyle Beckhama and Shirin Vossoughi b aStanford University, USA; bSchool of Education and Social Policy, Northwestern University, Evanston, USA ABSTRACT The culture of poverty thesis did not emerge from the conservative sha- dows of American intellectual life, but from its most liberal hopes for the future. Most of its earliest champions were committed to the cause of Black uplift, but never escaped the shame and judgment of the culture of poverty thesis. We look to the life and writings of W.E.B. Du Bois for examples of alternative possibilities. We could see Du Bois as an elitist who subscribed to a culture of poverty framework. Though there is some evidence for this view in his writings, the image falters when we examine the evolution of Du Bois’ thinking—the core focus of this paper. We examine key intellectual struggles present across Du Bois’ writings to explicate: 1) his changing thoughts on leadership (the “Talented Tenth”); and 2) his move toward an ever-broader advocacy of political engagement as the primary motor for Black liberation. The culture of poverty thesis did not emerge from the conservative shadows of American intellectual life, but from its most liberal (Harvey & Reed, 1996; Lewis, 1963). Most of its earliest champions were committed to the cause of Black uplift, however conditional (Frazier, 1949). Yet, these same proponents were never able to work out of the shame and judgment that came with the culture of poverty thesis, and did more to stymie Black progress than further it. The core argument – that Black people in particular, and poor people in general, play a fundamental role in their own oppression, that there are members of these communities that cannot change because of their culture, their values, the very things that make them who they are – lives on, and contains many internal tensions its advocates rarely address. As critics of the concept, we believe that examining the intellectual currents of its emergence and reproduction are essential to pushing back against contemporary manifestations of its core ideas. This paper traces the intellectual trajectory of W.E.B. Du Bois, a man whose work has not been directly linked to the larger culture of poverty thesis, but whose early ideas parallel its structure, as a way to move beyond the thesis’ seductiveness, simplicity, and reductiveness. Our intervention, which intersects with the work of Joy James (1997), aspires to erode the widespread over-emphasis on Du Bois’ early work and theory, particularly the tendency to treat his early views on racial leadership (in the form of the Talented Tenth) and Black aspirations for membership in the American polity (in the form of social and political assimilation) as settled (see Gooding-Williams, 2009, pp. 246–256 for examples). We believe that much can be gained in the perennial argument over variations of the culture of poverty thesis by examining Du Bois’ changing views of Black people, their capacities, and optimal avenues for liberation. We could easily see Du Bois as an elitist, a thinker who subscribed to a proto-culture-of-poverty framework, who was primarily concerned with Black people accepting a narrow form of leadership CONTACT Shirin Vossoughi [email protected]; Kyle Beckham [email protected] Stanford Graduate School of Education, 485 Lasuen Mall, Stanford, CA 94305 © 2020 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC 76 K. BECKHAM AND S. VOSSOUGHI in which natural betters dictated the direction of the race to the natural lowers. This view would certainly hold if we limited our examination of Du Bois to his political and academic work before his break from the NAACP in the mid-1930s and his movement toward Marxist internationalism (Darian-Smith, 2012). One could look at his classical early texts, like the Philadelphia Negro (1899) and The Souls of Black Folk (1903), and come away with an understanding of Du Bois as a researcher and thinker who was quite sympathetic to arguments linking structural racism to Black poverty and pathology, and this view would not be incorrect (Gooding-Williams, 2009, pp. 54–57, 61–65). Yet the popular conception of Du Bois as defined largely by his early empirical and theoretical work does a disservice to his full intellectual legacy and limits the utility of his ideas. We understand Du Bois as a dynamic thinker, one willing to revise and change his positions. In his later life, Du Bois saw that the myriad problems faced by Black Americans could only be truly solved through protracted political struggle aimed at securing greater Black independence and security within, and beyond, American society. Black people would be part of America, but only on their terms, as equals, rather than as inferiors lacking core “cultural” components that held them back from political and social equality. Even after his departure from the United States proper, Du Bois still believed that the United States would live up to its ideals vis Black people, or it would destroy itself. While recognizing Du Bois’ participation in deficit ideologies, we examine how the seeds of this more radical view were present in his early writings, and came to fuller bloom toward the end of his life. Du Bois came to believe there was nothing lacking in Black life that was not tied, first and foremost, to the material and political conditions in which Black people lived. Even when extremely critical of Black people, his position was rooted in a faith in Black potential. Black “culture” provided if not the seeds of Black liberation (Du Bois, 1903), then at the least, a firm foundation for full participation in broader American life. Unlike E. Franklin Frazier, who argued that Black commu- nities would be stabilized the more they conformed to the dominant patterns of “American” White middle class family life (1948, p. 438), Oscar Lewis (1966), who argued, “Once it [the culture of poverty] comes into existence it tends to perpetuate itself from generation to generation because of its effect on the children” (p. XLV), or Moynihan's 1965/1967) “tangle of pathology,” Du Bois never fully saw the problems facing Black communities as requiring a fundamental shift in who they were as a people. As we witness attempts to breathe life into old cultural explanations for issues that face diverse Black communities (Patterson & Fosse, 2015), the legacy of Du Bois becomes increasingly relevant. His commitment to revision, structural analysis, and democratic political engagement built on universal human rights, directly challenges those who argue that Black people play a decisive role in their own oppression. Gooding-Williams (2009) interprets Du Bois’ approach to political engage- ment as group leadership or rule; political expressiveness rooted in Black spiritual identity; and struggles against White supremacy as social exclusion. Though instructive, such interpretations risk treating Du Bois’ political thought as settled, and focus more prominently on his early work. By examining Du Bois’ thinking over time, we came to see his theory of political engagement more broadly as: an ever expanding view of who would lead that shifted how leadership itself was conceptualized; an expansive faith in the capacity of Black people to solve intra-communal problems independently; a structural view that saw the destruction of White supremacy as necessary for the liberation of not just Black people, but all people; and the increasing importance of cross-class solidarity and the centrality of the working class as prime movers of history (James, 1997). A focus on the necessity of political engagement by all classes of Black people underwent significant evolution throughout Du Bois’ life, emerging first as The Talented Tenth (1903) and later expanding to a much broader and Marxist-influenced notion of working-class leadership – a stance that included its own tensions and hierarchies. Contemporary “culture matters” theorists like Wilson (2009), Patterson (2006), and Small regularly de-emphasize, or outright ignore, the need for political engagement and mobilization of those in poverty as part of any plan for Black uplift (Patterson, 2006, 2014; Patterson & Fosse, 2015; Small, Harding, & Lamont, 2010; Wilson, 2009). DIASPORA, INDIGENOUS, AND MINORITY EDUCATION 77 Instead, their arguments often focus on the behaviors of the most disenfranchised segments of Black America and how those behaviors – rather than the very fact of their disenfranchisement – play primary roles in their ongoing oppression. Their solutions rest in changing the patterns of being of some Black people, rather than changing their relationship to political life and demanding greater voice for them in those endeavors. In what follows, we examine key intellectual struggles present within the range of Du Bois’ writings in order to explicate 1) how his thoughts on leadership evolved over time; and 2) his move toward an ever-broader advocacy of political engagement as the primary motor for Black liberation.