Campus
Gainesville
Publication date
2020
Publisher
Caribbean Philosophical Association
Book or Journal Information
CLR James Journal. Vol 26. No 1 & 2 Fall 2020. p259-286.
Keywords
Racial Capitalism, Black Economic Development, Cultural Framing of Race, Black Entrepreneurs, Black Workers, Black Professionals, Black Economy, Racialization of Markets, De-racializing Black economies, Poetic Historicist, Racial Socialism, Imperialism.
Abstract
In spite of being well represented in many of DuBois’s major texts, his theory of economic development in African American communities remains one of the under-thematized areas of his extensive corpus. This is due in major part to the fact that DuBois was not an economist. As a result, his writings on Black economic development are embedded in several texts that were more directly focused on the racial, sociological, political, historical, literary or biographical aspects of the lives of people of African descent. Consequently, in this paper, we will attempt to systematize Du Bois’s writings on Black economic development—drawing primarily from The Philadelphia Negro, Black Reconstruction in America, The World and Africa, Dusk of Dawn and some additional essays. From these texts, we will show the ways in which DuBois’s thinking on this subject moved from an early racial culturalist framing to a systematic notion of racial capitalism as the broad but changing framework within which he examined the challenges and prospects of black economic development. However, this culturalist framing was not a passing epistemic phase. As we will see, particularly in its poeticist form, this framing remained with DuBois to the end.
W.E.B. Du Bois, Racial Capitalism and Black Economic Development in the United States.”
In spite of being well represented in many of DuBois’s major texts, his theory of economic development in African American communities remains one of the under-thematized areas of his extensive corpus. This is due in major part to the fact that DuBois was not an economist. As a result, his writings on Black economic development are embedded in several texts that were more directly focused on the racial, sociological, political, historical, literary or biographical aspects of the lives of people of African descent. Consequently, in this paper, we will attempt to systematize Du Bois’s writings on Black economic development—drawing primarily from The Philadelphia Negro, Black Reconstruction in America, The World and Africa, Dusk of Dawn and some additional essays. From these texts, we will show the ways in which DuBois’s thinking on this subject moved from an early racial culturalist framing to a systematic notion of racial capitalism as the broad but changing framework within which he examined the challenges and prospects of black economic development. However, this culturalist framing was not a passing epistemic phase. As we will see, particularly in its poeticist form, this framing remained with DuBois to the end.