Talented Tendencies: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Seductive Elitism of Modernizing Discourses

Aaron Yates, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Du Bois's concept of the "Talented Tenth" as a leadership class among Black Americans has often been attacked for its elitism. Du Bois even responded to some such criticism and modified his ideas over the span of 45 years. This paper considers the concept of the "Talented Tenth" from two distinct, but related angles. In the first case it interrogates the social and historical conditions prevailing at the turn of the 20th century when Du Bois coined the concept, and connects these conditions to those attending to Du Bois's later revisions of the idea. The charge of elitism often lacks substantive consideration of the material conditions attending the formal end of US chattel slavery and the question of what sort of program could meaningfully lift the formerly enslaved to more equitable footing with white American society. This can lead to anachronistic and romanticized notions of the power of the masses. On the other hand, the critiques of the patriarchal and victorian bent of the “Talented Tenth” idea remains compelling. After examining the contextual factors influencing Du Bois's concept, the paper consider the ways in which the "Talented Tenth" departs from or reinforces contemporary discourses of modernization and progress. For all of Du Bois’s hostility towards American imperialism abroad, his own notion of progress seemed to overlap with more mainstream discourses to an extent that presents challenges to those that wish to claim his legacy entirely in the name of the post— and anticolonial.

No extended abstract or paper available

 Presented in Session 149. Critical/Anticolonial Theories as Objects of Historical Inquiries 2