A Different Look at Du Bois

In class today we spent the period breaking down Anthony Appiah’s essay The Uncompleted Argument: Du Bois and the Illusion of Race, and discussing Appiah’s main focus. We came to the conclusion that Appiah believed that Du Bois was stuck between the biological reference of race and the sociohistorical reference of race. He came to this conclusion because Du Bois contradicted himself in later essays. Yet, I think it is important to note that Appiah did not completely disagree with Du Bois, but rather he felt that Du Bois simply did not or could not finish the dismantling of the illusion of the biological reference to race at that point in his life.

As we came to this conclusion in class, it left me with a puzzling question. If Appiah’s essay was in fact creditable at the time, then why does the majority still refer to race in the same outdated manner today? So I did what anybody else would do and I took the initiative to Google it. Through my extensive search I came across an analytical novel of Du Bois published in 1998 called, W.E.B. DuBois, Race, and the City; The Philadelphia Negro and its Legacy, and edited by Micheal B. Katz and Thomas J. Surgrue. The novel is broken up in sections that analyze several of Du Bois’s essays.  The particular one that pertains to our class discussion was titled, DuBois’s Archaeology of Race: Re-Reading “The Conversation of Races” by Thomas C. Holt. As I skimmed through the piece I came across a quote that I believe answers my previous question.  

Race is not the only socially constructed category that remains nonetheless essential to both academic and lay analyses of social processes. For example, “nation” and “gender” are similarly “imagined” entities. What is important is to recognize that all such entities are not only socially constructed but also politically and historically constructed; that is, their very forms and utilities involve relationships of power and the deployment of power that have evolved over time. (63)

In other words, to say that race is a product of imagination rather than biology is not sufficient enough to completely banish the term from our speech. So while we can reluctantly say that race is not a biological entity, we cannot exclude the fact that it is an essential part of society. So do you believe that W.E.B. Du Bois left out the “dismantling of the illusion of race” by accident or that he recognized the weight the term would carry in society over time?