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Of interest: A New Sociological Critique of The Souls of Black Folk

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The 1903 publication of William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk is considered a watershed in the history of American arts, letters and politics. Du Bois (1868-1963), then a sociologist at Atlanta University, offered his theory of “double-consciousness” – the notion that black Americans are deprived of agency and self-awareness because survival in a racist society requires that they constantly police themselves to remain acceptable to their oppressors.

Writer W E B Du Bois


A lot has been written about Souls of Black Folk and the contemporary relevance of Du Bois’ argument. The best literary and rhetorical analysis, as far as I am concerned, is still Arnold Rampersad’s Art and Imagination of WEB Du Bois (Harvard University Press, 1976.) Rampersad situates Souls within the context of Du Bois’ evolving framework for thinking about race, which rested on several key tenets:

  • People of African descent are one people, with great internal diversity.
  • Colonialism and slavery had a defining impact on African peoples in ways that bind them together despite their diversity
  • Contrary to Hegel, et. al, African-descended people are contributors to history (this conviction grew over time. At the time of Souls, he identified spirituals as an indication of the capacity for cultural contributions.) African-descended people have made strides in the years since slavery.
  • Strategies and policies for making progress should be built upon empirical evidence, not faith or ideology. That requires a cadre of trained and educated leaders, ergo, the “Talented Tenth“

Rampersad said that if “Huckleberry Finn” is regarded as the seminal work in American literature, “Souls of Black Folk” has the equivalent place in African American literature. Subsequent generations have had good reason to use it as the point of departure from which to articulate their own views of the African American experience. Agree or disagree, one has to reckon with it.

In a new monograph, The Soul-less Souls of Black Folk: A Sociological Reconsideration of Black Consciousness as Du Boisian Double Consciousness Paul Mocombe appears to argue that WEB Du Bois’ Hegelian articulation of the black experience really was about the desire of elite black folks to be accept by elite white folks. He says Du Bois relies on essentialist biological and cultural notions of race that were prevalent among 19th century intellectuals and steeped in white supremacy. Aspects of his critique are familiar, but his analytical framework seems new and inventive.

I’m not sure I’m going to agree with Mocombe’s assertion that Du Bois was in thrall to scientific racism. I’d say Du Bois struggled with them, trying to find an alternative framework that met the scientific standards of that day. (Mia Bay’s essay, “The World Was Thinking Wrong About Race: The Philadelphia Negro and Nineteenth-Century Science” from WEB Du Bois, Race and the City: The Philadelphia Negro and Its Legacy” (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) speaks to this brilliantly.

Still, I’m putting Mocombe on my summer reading list, and I’d love to know what Dr. Rampersad thinks of his thesis.

Why I fear I’ll never master SEO

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Let’s face it — I’m an old-school dog who has spent the last 14 years trying to learn new-school tricks. I suck at writing SEO-friendly heads. I keep wanting to go old-school.

Now understand, I’m a magazine writer, not a newspaperwoman, so the only real newspaper-style  hed-writing I’ve had to do is from my time at the Bell Labs News in the 1980s.  I’m talking about where my brain goes when it comes time to write a headline.

I love heds with puns. I love those old Wall Street Journal-style multi-deck heds. (I love to write “heds.”) I love the way good headline writers create a voice for their papers that shouts from the newstand. You would never confuse a New York Daily News hed with a Wall Street Journal hed.

I remember great heds the way people remember great movie lines. Here’s one I learned about when I was in journalism  school. It’s from the New York Daily News. It concerns the  story of a young woman from Denmark who came to the US on a tourist visa to marry her American fiance. Tragically, he died just before the wedding. She wanted to remain in the US, but the immigration authorities were not sympathetic. The Daily News front page screamed:

US orders Danish to go

It’s crass, I know, but you’ve got to admit, it’s funny, and it’s informative, if you’re reading it as a human. It’s what you expect from the Daily News. But it’s not terribly SEO-friendly, is it? No solid keywords to match the bots’ metadata -” immigration”, perhaps, or maybe “wedding tragedy.” Bots aren’t very punny. (Then again, Copyblogger says that the SEO crowd goes about that whole keyword thing the wrong way, anyway.

On the other hand, that hed is short enough to be twitter-friendly. But it’s not the kind of hed I’m prone to writing. As much as I appreciate the craft that goes into writing heds for a good tab, I’m a broadsheet kind of girl. I’d rather read a sonnet than  a limerick.

Oh, and another thing — I love the kicker. If I ever get around to writing my own WordPress theme, it will be a newspaper theme with a kicker for each hed.

What’s a kicker? It’s a clever short hed that goes over the main headline. Here’s a good example:


SCARLET FEVER

World ready for ‘Gone with the Wind’ sequel

That’s craft, right there. “Scarlet Fever” is a nice double entendre. It gives you a sense of the intensity of fans’ enthusiasm for the movie. (That enthusiasm is lost on me, I confess, since I consider that book and film to be a soft-core piece of racist propaganda, but I digress.) The main hed tells you exactly what the newspeg is.  It’s like haiku, but more purposeful.

Then again, maybe I’m just being old and whiny, and I need to just put on my eyeshade and get back to being disciplined about writing twitter-friendly heds that sing.