Full Description
A clear, critical, accessible, and ultimately hopeful discovery voyage through the seas of Du Bois's language and ideas.
Offering a vision both hopeful and thoughtful, Reading Du Bois is an Afrocentric reexamination of the work of one of the most important intellectuals of our time. Du Bois wanted to solve the issue of race dividing American society. Aaron X. Smith and Molefi Kete Asante take one of Du Bois's key concepts, the idea that the problem of his century was going to be the color line, and demonstrate that such a reader of that concept provides fresh insights into our present interpersonal and political situation. The application of Du Bois's concept such as the color line reveals the subject place of African American people is not merely a marginal space but rather a central space to all who seek to bring justice, democracy, and optimism.
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
1. A Performative Biography: Who was Du Bois?
2. Du Bois's Central Contributions to the Race Discourse
3. The Entrapment of Ambition: Talented Tenth
4. The Narrative of Socialism Considering Democracy
5. Restorative Imagination in Du Bois's "The Comet"
6. Du Bois and the Color Line, Battling the Toxic Social Construction of Race
7. The Evolution of Du Bois into a Pan African Race Organizer
8. The Afrocentric Corrective at the Crest of Victory
Notes
Bibliography
Index
