“A Matter of Long Centuries and Not Years”: Du Bois on the Temporality of Social Change

Introduction

In the wake of the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, uprisings spread like wildfire across the nation as multiracial crowds took to the streets to protest police killings of Black Americans. Such protests were nothing new, of course. Since the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2013, demonstrations to protest the killing of Black Americans have proliferated. This time, though, things felt different. Not only were these uprisings larger and more multiracial than before, but they were also framed in terms of a broader “racial reckoning” that went beyond challenging police brutality to challenging the systemic racism of which brutality is one expression (Chang 2020; Horowitz et al. 2020; Shyong 2020). Support for Black Lives Matter surged (Cohn and Quealy 2020). Protestors tore down Confederate statues (Taylor 2020). Anti-racism reading lists were disseminated online and white readers clamored for books such as Ibram Kendi’s How to Be an Antiracist and Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility. Corporations—including those with lackluster records for supporting racial justice—issued statements of solidarity and collectively pledged $50 billion to support efforts for racial equity (Jan et al. 2021). Taken together, these developments were optimistically interpreted—by journalists and academics alike—as proof that this time, things really were different. White Americans were finally waking up to the reality of white supremacy and were motivated to do something about it. A racially just society seemed more nearly in reach than ever before.

Just one year later, however, support for Black Lives Matter has precipitously declined to levels even lower than those prior to Floyd’s death; this decline is the result of rapidly plummeting support from white Americans and Republicans, despite high levels of support from racial minorities (Chudy and Jefferson 2021; Page, Elbeshbishi, and Quarshie 2021). Moreover, of the $50 billion that corporations pledged in support of racial equity efforts, less than one percent has so far actually been donated (Jan et al. 2020). Moreover, a white insurrectionist mob stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an effort to overturn the results of a national election in which the outcome was decided by voters in cities with substantial Black populations, such as Philadelphia, Milwaukee, and Atlanta. Nor was it insignificant that this insurrection occurred fewer than twenty-four hours after a multiracial coalition in Georgia elected Raphael Warnock to Congress—the state’s first Black senator since Reconstruction. Since then, Republican lawmakers in every state but two have introduced a total of 389 bills seeking to restrict access to the ballot (Brennan Center for Justice 2021)—for example, by imposing voter ID requirements, limiting the number of drop boxes, and eliminating Sunday voting—leading Stacey Abrams to describe such efforts as “a redux of Jim Crow in a suit and tie” (Hemmer 2021).

In response to these developments, a slew of commentators have argued that the protests of the summer of 2020 were an illusion of progress and that, in fact, no “racial reckoning” has taken place at all (Balto 2021; Blake 2021; Harriot 2021; Holloway 2021; Meraji and Demby 2021). Within the span of a single year, then, the tenor among commentators swerved from hope that change was imminent to disappointment—and in some instances, cynicism. This swerve, however, provides us with an opportunity to reflect on the prospects—and specifically, the prospective timeline—for the realization of a racially just society in the United States. Simply put: how long will it take?

This question is not new, and it preoccupied W. E. B. Du Bois, especially in the years between 1920 and 1940. This article looks to Du Bois’s thought in the interwar years—especially Darkwater, Black Reconstruction, Dusk of Dawn, and his writings in The Crisis—as a lens through which to examine the temporality of social change. In this article, I argue that Du Bois’s turn to the role of white unreason in sustaining white supremacy explains the dual temporality of his political vision and the dual strategies that ensue. According to Du Bois, white supremacy is upheld not only by ignorance, but also, by what we can conceptualize as “white unreason”; that is, by the habits, customs, and the subconscious and unconscious impulses characterized by the presumption of racial dominance. Because white unreason has been produced and reproduced through generations of institutional conditioning, it is not immutable, but rather, malleable. Specifically, the realization of a racially just society requires the transformation of white unreason from presuming racial dominance to presuming racial equality; this transformation, according to Du Bois, is the purpose of propaganda. But while white unreason is malleable and can therefore be transformed through propaganda, it is not quickly malleable. Transforming white unreason through propaganda is a long, slow process—so much as to push the realization of a racially just society into the distant future—so in the meantime, Black Americans must ensure their survival through voluntary self-segregation. In short, Du Bois’s political vision is characterized by a dual temporality: over the long term, Black Americans must transform white unreason through propaganda; until that is achieved, they must ensure their survival and well-being through separate institutions. More precisely, “dual temporality” refers to the dual temporal horizons—long-term and interim—required for Du Bois’s dual political strategies to take effect. For Du Bois, the effects of propaganda require a long temporal horizon, while the effects of voluntary self-segregation can be realized in the more proximate future.

In making this argument, this article builds upon the growing scholarly literature on Du Bois’s middle works (Balfour 2011; Dahl 2022; Douglas 2019; Valdez 2019). As scholars have shown, by 1920, Du Bois changed his mind regarding the key factors upholding racial dominance (Byerman 2010; Gooding-Williams 2014; Holt 1990; Olson 2005; Reed 1999; Sullivan 2003; Williams 2014). They rightly observe that while previously, Du Bois assumed it was primarily the ignorance of white Americans that accounted for racial dominance, witnessing ongoing racial discrimination and the resurgence of lynchings led him to account for it in terms of nonrational factors such as habits, customs, and unconscious impulses—what I conceptualize as “white unreason” or what Myers (2022) refers to as “irrationality” and Sullivan (2003) describes in terms of “the unconscious.”

Scholars are right that Du Bois’s thinking undergoes a shift—particularly evident after 1920—that emphasizes the role of white unreason in upholding racial dominance. However, scholars have not considered how the nature of white unreason has implications for understanding the dual temporality of social change in Du Bois’s thought. This article grounds Du Bois’s temporal account of social change in his conception of white unreason as both malleable and durable; specifically, his turn to white unreason explains why he believes that the realization of a racially just society is very far away, for it relies on the slow transformation of white unreason through propaganda. In view of this, he takes a different approach to the present than he would have, had he thought such a society could immediately be realized. By taking seriously the temporal implications of white unreason, this article yields a distinctive interpretation of Du Bois’s interwar writings.

Taking seriously the temporal implications of white unreason also has interpretive benefits for scholarship on Du Bois’s thought. While scholars have correctly observed Du Bois’s ambivalence regarding the prospects of racial justice in the United States (Basevich 2020; Byerman 2010; Winters 2016), his advocacy of propaganda (Gooding-Williams 2014; Myers 2022; Rogers 2012; Williams 2014), and his support for separate institutions (Aldridge 2015; Holt 1990; Lewis 2009; Olson 2005), these observations are piecemeal. This article shows that these observations are part of Du Bois’s coherent—even if implicit—theory of the dual temporal structure of social change. Taking seriously Du Bois’s conception of white unreason enables us to situate his arguments for propaganda and voluntary self-segregation as temporally informed strategies that seek to abolish white supremacy over the long term and survive it in the meantime, respectively. Moreover, paying attention to the nature of white unreason shows us that—at least between 1920 and 1940—Du Bois does not abandon hope that white Americans can be brought around to support racial equality (cf Basevich 2020; Byerman 2010). Rather, he shifts his views regarding how white Americans will be brought around and how long it will take to do so—and hence, what Black Americans ought to do while they wait for this to occur. Explicating the temporal implications of white unreason suggests why Du Bois remains hopeful about the prospects of a racially just society over the long term, even as he is realistic about its prospects in the immediate future.

Furthermore, excavating Du Bois’s account of social change provides intellectual resources for weathering disappointment when faced with slow progress or setbacks in the present. By providing us with a framework of social change, Du Bois models how advocates of racial justice might navigate defeat without devolving into defeatism. More broadly, Du Bois puts on the table important considerations for thinking about the pace of social change: clarifying the nature of the problem at hand, identifying the kinds of political strategies that will address it, taking seriously the temporal significance of those strategies, and calibrating our expectations accordingly. While some activists—particularly abolitionists—rightly emphasize the longue durée of social change (Dixon 2023; Gilmore 2023; Gilmore and Kilgore 2019), this insight is often unacknowledged by the wider public, as evidenced by contemporary commentators who characterized the summer 2020 protests as nothing more than an illusion of progress. Furthermore, by explaining why racial progress takes place over a long temporal horizon, Du Bois clarifies its implications in the interim for Black Americans—namely, the need to engage in self-protective strategies. By foregrounding questions regarding the temporality of social change, Du Bois’s writings contain resources for navigating challenges that continue to vex us today.

One clarification is in order before proceeding. My claim about the temporality of Du Bois’s views is itself temporally bound in that it applies to his views during the interwar period. As Basevich (2020) correctly notes, Du Bois’s views continued to change after 1940, such that by the time he moved to Ghana in 1961, he was more skeptical about the possibility of a racially just society in the United States. Despite the later changes in his thought, his writings between 1920 and 1940 provide us with a model of social change that can overcome the tendency to swerve between optimism and despair by alerting activists and scholars to the temporal dilemmas of abolishing racial domination.

This article proceeds as follows. In Part One, I outline the turn in Du Bois’s thought after 1920: from focusing on white ignorance to focusing on the role of white unreason—a concept we can piece together from writings scattered throughout his middle period—in upholding racial dominance. While its origins are located in the slave trade, white unreason continues to be reproduced by social institutions such as schools. As Du Bois sees it, white unreason is akin to a custom in that it is a widespread norm and akin to a habit insofar as it consists in automatic routines. However, the thoroughgoing extent to which social institutions have conditioned whites into a presumption of racial dominance is such that white unreason is more durable than custom or habit; it is also akin to the Freudian unconscious. In Part Two, I turn to Du Bois’s critique of school desegregation to illustrate the durability of white unreason and the imperative of transforming it. According to Du Bois, unless white unreason is transformed, Black children will suffer from a substandard education for the sake of the merely symbolic equality that desegregated schools represent. To transform this merely symbolic equality of desegregation into a substantive equality that truly supports the education of Black children, white unreason must itself be transformed. By revealing the problems of desegregating schools without transforming white unreason, Du Bois makes clear the stakes of such transformation. Given the imperative of and temporal horizon for transforming white unreason, then, Du Bois offers two political strategies: propaganda and voluntary self-segregation, which I lay out in Part Three.

Part One: Moral Psychology

In Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois narrates the shift in his views accounting for the persistence of racial dominance. Recalling the view he subscribed to early in his career, Du Bois ([1940], 1986) writes, “My basic theory had been that race prejudice was primarily a matter of ignorance on the part of the mass of men . . . that when the truth was properly presented, the monstrous wrong of race hate must melt and melt quickly before it” (760). This view is premised on the Platonic assumption that knowledge motivates right action; as a corollary, those who act immorally do so because they lack the relevant knowledge, which is to say, they are ignorant. This account of moral psychology assumed that it was “the insensibility of ignorance and inexperience, that white America did not know of or realize the continuing plight of the Negro” (Du Bois [1935c] 1995, 565), which then led white Americans to believe myths of racial inferiority and, therefore, to subordinate Black Americans. Understood in this way, racial dominance is primarily an epistemic problem that requires an epistemic solution; if white Americans know better, they will do better.

For this reason, Du Bois devoted the early years of his career to supplying white Americans with the relevant knowledge—namely, that there is no natural relationship between skin color and ability—in the hope that once they understood this, they would no longer act to uphold racial dominance. As Du Bois ([1944] 1990) recalls, “My long-term remedy was Truth: carefully gathered scientific proof that neither color nor race determined the limits of a man’s capacity or desert.” (41) Through studies such as “The Philadelphia Negro,” Du Bois sought to demonstrate that high poverty, crime, and illiteracy rates among Black Americans in Philadelphia were in no way natural; rather, they were the result of white racial discrimination and the lack of equal opportunity. So powerful was his assumption about the power of knowledge to motivate racial progress that even as Southern states rapidly disenfranchised Black Americans and passed Jim Crow legislation in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Du Bois ([1944] 1990) clung to the “belie[f] that my program of investigation and study was just what was needed to bring understanding in the long run, based on truth” (45). To the extent that the path to racial justice travelled through reason, the central task consisted in changing the minds of white Americans. Du Bois ([1935c] 1995) summarizes the efforts of his early career in the following way: “we have striven by book and periodical, by speech and appeal, by various dramatic methods of agitation, to put the essential facts before the American people” (565).

But by 1920, Du Bois was skeptical that knowledge was the key to social change. Having listened to accounts of rampant racial discrimination endured by Black soldiers in the U.S. military during World War I—as documented by him in “An Essay Toward a History of the Black Man in the Great War” (Du Bois 1919)—he became increasingly convinced that if whites were willing to sacrifice U.S. military prowess to uphold Jim Crow, then racial dominance was not simply a problem of ignorance, but of something deeper. Combined with the events of the Red Summer of 1919 and a resurgence of lynchings, Du Bois’s enthusiasm regarding the motivational power of knowledge for racial justice waned. As he writes, “Today there can be no doubt that Americans know the facts; and yet they remain or are for the most part indifferent and unmoved.” (Du Bois [1935c] 1995, 565)

That being said, Du Bois ([1934a] 1986) did not give up on the vision of a racially just society, which he characterized as the “complete integration of the black race with the white race in America, with no distinction of color in political, civil or social life” (1247), along with the abolition of national and economic distinctions. However, he realized that racial dominance was not primarily the result of ignorance, as he had previously assumed; as Du Bois ([1940] 1986, 557) observes, “I saw defending this [color] bar not simply ignorance and ill will; these to be sure; but also certain more powerful motives less open to reason or appeal.” This realization led Du Bois to reject the Platonic assumption that underwrote his previous efforts and to significantly revise his moral psychological account of human action. On his revised account, Du Bois de-emphasized ignorance as one—and even then, far from the most important—source of racial dominance. As Du Bois ([1944] 1990, 57) notes, “the majority of men do not usually act in accord with reason.” To be clear, Du Bois does not deny that reason can motivate human action. Rather, he denies that “the majority” are “usually” motivated by reason, thereby leaving open the possibility that a minority of people will consistently act according to reason. Moreover, in describing the “majority of men” as those who “do not usually act in accord with reason,” he implies that “the majority” occasionally do. In this way, Du Bois allows for the possibility that of the sum total of human actions, a small percentage are rational. In other words, Du Bois’s claim is not binary—that is, whether (or not) people act according to reason—rather, it concerns the frequency with which most people act according to reason. In this way, Du Bois provides a general moral psychological account regarding the motivational sources of action—for it explains how most people act most of the time—and as such, it allows for exceptions.

On Du Bois’s revised account, then, at best, reason consistently motivates the actions of a few whites and only occasionally motivates the actions of most whites. As Du Bois ([1940] 1986) sees it, most whites usually act to uphold racial dominance because of “considerations unpierced by reason” (557). As Du Bois ([1940] 1986) elaborates elsewhere, these considerations consist in “long followed habits, customs and folkways; of subconscious trains of reasoning and unconscious nervous reflexes” (679). While the considerations he lists are distinct—and hence, not interchangeable with one another—they all shape human behavior in the absence of rational deliberation. In fact, in Dusk of Dawn, Du Bois ([1940] 1986) refers to such nonrational considerations collectively as “unreason” (557, 558). Moreover, to the extent that Du Bois ([1920b] 1999) defines whiteness as “the assumption that of all the hues of God whiteness alone is inherently and obviously better than brownness or tan,” (17–18) we can conceptualize “white unreason” as consisting in the nonrational considerations characterized by the presumption of racial dominance.

Furthermore, Du Bois’s writings suggest how custom, habit, and the sub and unconscious impulses constitute the durability of white unreason. In what follows, I outline one possibility: white unreason is akin to a custom insofar as it is a widespread norm, and akin to a habit insofar as it is an automatic routine. However, the depth of institutional socialization over multiple generations renders this presumption significantly more durable than a habit or custom because it has causal power over individuals; in this way, white unreason is akin to the Freudian “unconscious.” Unlike breaking a habit or a custom, individuals cannot violate the unconscious simply through a rational and conscious exercise of a will to do otherwise. As I will show in what follows, this explains why Du Bois turns to propaganda to transform white unreason.

Of course, nothing essential about people with light skin leads them to an unreasoned presumption of racial dominance. Du Bois observes how social institutions—rooted in the legacy of the slave trade as an economic institution—have produced and reproduced white unreason over generations. As he writes, “A world campaign beginning with the slave-trade and ending with the refusal to capitalize the word ‘Negro,’ leading through a passionate defense of slavery by attributing every bestiality to blacks and finally culminating in the evident modern profit which lies in degrading blacks—all this has unconsciously trained millions of honest, modern men into the belief that black folk are sub-human” (Du Bois [1920b] 1999, 41, my emphasis). While Black Reconstruction is clear that social institutions invented racial ideologies—both in terms of conscious beliefs and white unreason—to protect planters’ profits derived from chattel slavery as an economic institution (and not the other way around), Du Bois also observes that racial ideologies outlive the economic institutions they were invented to protect. This, then, suggests that racial ideologies are semi-autonomous of economic institutions. ¹ More specifically, racial ideologies are semi-autonomous of economic institutions because in addition to justifying and sustaining economic exploitation—whether in the form of chattel slavery, convict leasing, and debt peonage—they also tend to take on a life of their own. So while racial ideologies emerged to justify—and after having emerged, reinforce—exploitative economic institutions, they cannot be reduced to their role in shoring up such institutions. ² In short, “semi” modifies “autonomous” additively; that is, racial ideologies serve a non-economic function in addition to an economic one.

The semi-autonomy of white unreason is expressed in “The Souls of White Folk,” in which Du Bois indicates that in addition to justifying and reinforcing economic exploitation, white unreason also takes on a life of its own. So while the essay points out the economic role of white unreason—namely, for generating “inordinate profits” (Du Bois [1920a] 1986, 935)—Du Bois’s ([1920a] 1986) description of the pleasure white Americans feel at the prospect of mass Black death is significant for grasping its non-economic role: “To the millions of my people no misfortune could happen—of death and pestilence, failure and defeat—that would not make the hearts of millions of their fellows beat with fierce, vindicative joy!” (926) Here, it is worth noting the conceptual distinction between racial domination for the purpose of economic exploitation from racial domination for the purpose of extermination. That whites feel a pleasure—a “fierce, vindictive joy”—in mass Black death suggests that narratives of racial inferiority can also transcend considerations of economic exploitation, for the realization of mass Black death would undermine a necessary condition of such exploitation. To be clear, while white gratification at some level of Black death can function as part of a regime of capital accumulation, mass Black death is incompatible with such a regime. One can neither subordinate nor exploit an exterminated group. So while racial ideologies have an instrumental role in reinforcing economic exploitation, Du Bois suggests that their role is not solely instrumental, for they also consist in fantasies that transcend it. ³ That racial ideologies take on a life of their own indicates that they are semi-autonomous from—rather than fully autonomous or merely instrumental in shoring up—economic institutions. Moreover, to the extent that racial ideologies are semi-autonomous of economic institutions, Du Bois suggests that realizing a racially just society must go beyond eradicating economic institutions that exploit Black life for profit. As he sees it, while abolishing exploitative economic institutions is necessary for eradicating racial ideologies, it is not enough on its own; transformation of the social institutions that perpetuate racial ideologies is also required.

Moreover, Du Bois observes how institutions socialize unreason into whiteness as a custom. Du Bois ([1920b] 1999) describes such socialization in the following way: “They had been taught to laugh and make sport; they saw that which the heading of every newspaper column, the lie of every cub reporter, the exaggeration of every press dispatch, and the distortion of every speech and book, had taught them was a mass of despicable men, inhuman; at best, laughable; at worst, the meat of mobs and fury.” (51) Social institutions reproduce whiteness as a custom; that is, as a widespread norm whose truth is unreflectively assumed rather than critically examined. Through institutions that reproduce racialized virtues and vices, whiteness “has worked itself through warp and woof of our daily thought with a thoroughness that few realize” (Du Bois [1920b] 1999, 25). Whiteness is not grounded in scientific, historical, or sociological knowledge; if it were, Du Bois ([1920b] 1999) argues, “it would be held as a postulate of the most tentative kind, ready at any time to be withdrawn in the face of facts” (41). That the belief is not withdrawn, despite its “contradict[ion] by Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, and Arabian experience,” suggests, then, that it is merely a custom—that is, “simply passionate, deep seated heritage, and as such can be moved by neither argument nor fact” (Du Bois [1920b] 1999, 41).

In addition to a custom, white unreason resembles a habit, understood as an automatic routine. Habits are routines insofar as they are regular practices whose value is assumed, not deliberated, as a condition of action. Furthermore, habits are automatic in that the constitutive steps of the routine can occur thoughtlessly. That Du Bois describes white unreason in terms of a “habit,” then, suggests that the presumption of racial dominance occurs to whites as an automatic routine whose value is assumed and the constitutive steps enacted thoughtlessly. It is significant that in “The Challenge of Detroit” (1925)—where Du Bois ([1925] 1986) enumerates various instances of whites insulting, threatening, and driving out well-educated, professional Black Americans who buy homes in neighborhoods whites consider their own—that he describes such whites as “forming by habit the lawless material of mobs” (1213). By describing mob activity as a habit, Du Bois suggests that whites threaten Black families, damage their property, and drive them out of neighborhoods as a matter of automatic routine; that is, as regular practices enacted thoughtlessly.

However, Du Bois also defines white unreason in terms of subconscious impulses, suggesting that that it is more durable than custom or habit. One may find it difficult to violate custom or break habits, but they can be violated or broken through the rational and conscious exercise of the will. By becoming aware of an undesirable habit, developing a conscious will to break it, and undertaking actions to break it—for example, by cultivating new practices—the rational will of the individual can overcome a habit. But Du Bois’s description of white unreason in terms of the “subconscious” goes further than this, suggesting that the power of white unreason transcends individual attempts to contravene it. This is one way we can understand Du Bois’s ([1940], 1986) description of white unreason as “those irrational and partly subconscious actions of men which control so large a proportion of their deeds” (696, my emphasis). Akin to the Freudian unconscious, whites may become aware of how their behavior is controlled by unreason—and they may even sincerely wish they were not—and yet, most cannot overcome it in the same way they might overcome customs or habits. For Du Bois, white unreason is more durable than a habit or custom, such that most whites usually cannot, of their own individual will, do otherwise.

Given that white unreason controls white behavior, Du Bois suggests that the persistence of racial dominance should come as no surprise. As Du Bois ([1920b] 1999) observes, racialized moral and artistic values are “continually rung in picture and story, in newspaper heading and moving-picture, in sermon and school book,” culminating in actions in which “the King can do no wrong—a White Man is always right and a Black Man has no rights which a white man is bound to respect” (25). To the extent that institutions have, over centuries, socialized white Americans into the presumption of racial dominance, Du Bois’s point is that white unreason renders most whites incapable of treating Black Americans as equals. To ask, “Why won’t white Americans treat Black Americans as their equals?” is therefore the wrong question. Rather, the relevant question is, “Given their socialization into a position of racial dominance, why would white Americans treat Black Americans as their equals?” Given the power of white unreason, for whites to relate to Black Americans as equals would require acting in ways that are diametrically opposed to how they have been socialized to act.

If white unreason controls white behavior, as Du Bois claims, then transforming white unreason is required to transform how whites treat Black Americans. As Du Bois ([1940], 1968, 696) argues, “There is no way in which the American Negro can force this nation to treat him as an equal until the unconscious cerebration and folkways of the nation, as well as its rational deliberate thought among the majority of whites, are willing to grant equality.” Here, Du Bois indicates that only when white unreason changes—that is, when “the unconscious cerebration and folkways of the nation . . . are willing to grant equality”—will whites treat Black Americans as equals and thereby share power over the terms of their collective existence. In short, by 1920, Du Bois held that the path to a racially just society runs primarily through the transformation of white unreason rather than the provision of relevant knowledge.

Part Two: White Unreason and School Desegregation

In this section, I turn to Du Bois’s critique of school desegregation, which in his view, both exposes the durability of white unreason and clarifies why it must be transformed. Specifically, Du Bois suggests that white unreason is so durable that desegregation does not abolish it; rather, desegregation simply expresses white unreason in new forms. As Du Bois sees it, unless white unreason is transformed to presume racial equality rather than racial dominance, school desegregation will merely produce an illusion of racial equality that obscures the fact of continued racial dominance—and Black children will pay the price. By demonstrating what happens when white unreason remains untransformed despite desegregation—namely, that Black students will suffer from a substandard education—Du Bois asserts the imperative of transforming white unreason for realizing a racially just society. To be fair, Du Bois does not explicitly attribute racial discrimination by white teachers and students to white unreason. However, given Du Bois’s view that white unreason explains why most whites usually act to uphold racial dominance, then insofar as racial discrimination in schools is an instance of racial dominance, we can infer that white unreason explains the actions of most white teachers and students towards Black students most of the time.

As Du Bois argues, education requires a constellation of material and nonmaterial conditions, including, among the latter, ethical dispositions of fairness and equal respect, both between teachers and students, and students among themselves. It requires a “sympathetic touch between teacher and pupil” and “contact between pupils . . . on the basis of perfect social equality” (Du Bois 1935b, 328). However, the power of white unreason is such that Du Bois views the relevant ethical dispositions as nonexistent in the schools of his time, such that the conditions under which Black students can be educated in desegregated schools are undercut. As Du Bois sees it, integrating Black children into predominantly white elementary schools, where they are neither respected nor wanted, is deeply harmful. As Du Bois (1935b, 330) observes, “I have repeatedly seen wise and loving colored parents take infinite pains to force their little children into schools where the white children, white teachers, and white parents despised and resented the dark child, made mock of it, neglected or bullied it, and literally rendered its life a living hell.” Because of the “brutal but real fact” of racial prejudice, the Black child becomes “a battering ram,” forced to navigate a “hell[] where they are ridiculed and hated” (Du Bois 1935b, 331). At best, the presumption of racial dominance by white teachers and students produces a hostile environment that prevents Black children from learning; at worst, such an environment leads to Black children “land[ing] in the gutter or penitentiary” (Du Bois [1934b] 1995, 559).

Moreover, Du Bois argues, the absence of fairness and equal respect in desegregated institutions is a widespread problem, suggesting that the presumption of racial dominance is not something children outgrow, even when given the benefit of more education. Due to “inherited prejudice, largely the result of unconscious and subconscious psychological reactions,” (Du Bois [1941] 1973, 174), Du Bois (1935b) notes that Black students are “admitted but not welcomed” at Harvard, Yale, and Columbia, for they “cannot get fair recognition, either in classroom or on the campus, in dining halls and student activities, or in common human courtesy” (329). As a result, he declares, “I know that race prejudice in the United States today is such that most Negroes cannot receive proper education in white institutions” (Du Bois 1935b, 328–9). That Black students can be admitted into and yet not educated in elite institutions indicates that while resources are important, education requires more than integrating Black students into predominantly white, well-resourced schools. Crucially, the education of Black students requires relations of equal respect and care that Du Bois observes are largely absent from schools at all levels, both public and private.

All this being said, Du Bois does not oppose school desegregation in principle. His point, rather, is that unless desegregation is accompanied by a deep transformation of white unreason, desegregated schools will simply become new sites for the perpetuation of racial dominance. For him, this is unacceptable; accepting racial dominance in a desegregated school is to “accept[] a proffered equality which is not equality,” for it is to submit to “discrimination simply because it does not involve actual and open segregation” (Du Bois [1934] 1995, 560). This “proferred equality” is merely symbolic rather than substantive; it is a surface-level change that substitutes for the thoroughgoing transformation of white unreason necessary to achieve genuine racial equality. As Du Bois sees it, until we address the real problem—namely, the refusal of white teachers and students to treat Black students with fairness and equal respect—desegregated schools will not be qualitatively distinct from segregated schools with respect to educating Black students. Inclusion through desegregation is not enough; inclusion on equal terms is required.

More broadly, grasping the durability of white unreason helps explain the change in Du Bois’s thinking during the interwar period from championing desegregation as a key means to achieving racial equality to skepticism of desegregation. His skepticism regarding the ability of desegregated schools to foster racial equality can be understood as a function of his broader realization of the durability of white unreason; it is sufficiently durable that segregation is one—but not the only—method through which white Americans subordinate Black Americans. This, moreover, is the result of a shift in Du Bois’s views on the relationship between spatial configuration and power relations: from conflating segregation with racial discrimination and desegregation with equality, to the view that racial discrimination is highly malleable and thus not exclusive to any particular spatial configuration. Until white reason is transformed, then, re-configuring physical space will simply yield new forms of white unreason.

Early in his career, Du Bois opposed segregation because he equated segregation with subordination; to push for desegregation, he thought, is how Black Americans ought to resist subordination and therefore demand equality. As Du Bois wrote in 1911, “Every man, then, that bows to the dogma of race separation must accept subordination and humiliation along with the destruction of the best ideals of democracy” (Du Bois 1911, 21). Here, he refers to segregation in terms of subordination across separate white and Black spaces; white Americans control the terms of Black life by literally controlling where Black Americans can physically exist, leading to inferior goods and services in Black communities. As Du Bois (1910, 10–11) notes, “when the discrimination is once established, immediately the public provisions for the segregated portion become worse. . . . If it is discrimination against colored people, the colored school becomes poor, with less money and less means of efficiency.” Understood in this way, segregation is a means to an end; white Americans create and enforce separate spaces in order to subordinate Black Americans.

As his writings on school desegregation in the 1930s suggest, however, Du Bois eventually realized that white unreason is sufficiently durable to exert its force across a range of spatial configurations. Far from abolishing the presumption of racial dominance, then, desegregation merely reconfigures it in different ways. If Du Bois once understood segregation as a means to an end—namely, of racial domination—he later understood it as one of many means to such an end. To be clear, Du Bois does not reject desegregation per se; on his account, desegregation is neither good nor bad in itself. However, as he sees it, changing a spatial context cannot by itself solve the problem of discrimination; as a result, desegregation cannot be sufficient as the primary means to foster a racially egalitarian society. Du Bois’s point is that white unreason is sufficiently durable such that as long as it persists, racial subordination will continue to characterize all spaces, regardless of how they are configured. This, then, indicates the necessity of transforming white unreason, for only such transformation can ensure that desegregated spaces are also racially egalitarian.

Part Three: Propaganda and Voluntary Self-Segregation

While white unreason is durable—a function of generations of conditioning by social institutions—it is not immutable. It can be changed, and for Du Bois, propaganda is the means by which to do so. But while white unreason is changeable, it is not quickly changeable; for this reason, Du Bois advocates for voluntary self-segregation to ensure Black survival and well-being until white unreason has been transformed. Du Bois’s account of social change is therefore characterized by a dual temporality that corresponds to dual political strategies: propaganda to transform white unreason over the long term and voluntary self-segregation in the meantime.

As we have already seen, Du Bois observes that most whites typically act to uphold racial dominance as a function of white unreason; for whites to be induced to cease their racial dominance, then, white unreason must be transformed. So while Du Bois does not abandon the use of facts and arguments to persuade whites that there is no natural basis for white supremacy, he insists facts and arguments are not nearly enough. As he declares, “To attack and better all this calls for more than appeal and argument” (Du Bois [1940] 1986, 697) such that “we must apply other remedies and judgments if we would get justice and right to prevail in the world” (Du Bois [1940] 1986, 679). These “other remedies and judgments” consist in “a long, patient, well-planned and persistent campaign of propaganda” that targets the “vast area of the subconscious and the irrational and especially of habit and convention” (Du Bois [1940], 1986, 696). If knowledge is the remedy for ignorance, then propaganda is the remedy for white unreason; specifically, propaganda transforms white unreason from presuming racial dominance to presuming racial equality.

To be sure, this is not the only way that Du Bois employs the term “propaganda.” As Williams (2014) points out, Du Bois employs “propaganda” in two ways: one in a conventional and pejorative sense and another in an unconventional and non-pejorative sense. When Du Bois employs the term “propaganda” in a conventional sense, he is referring to falsehoods created for political purposes; this is how he employs the term in the final chapter of Black Reconstruction, “The Propaganda of History.” There, he characterizes the dominant historical narratives of Reconstruction as propaganda because they distort historical evidence to justify racial dominance through Jim Crow. As Du Bois (1935a, 714) writes, “It is propaganda like this that has led men in the past to insist that history is ‘lies agreed upon.’” Understood in this way, propaganda refers to false narratives advanced for political purposes; in this instance, to justify white supremacy.

But as we see in Du Bois’s other writings during the interwar period, he also invokes ‘propaganda’ in unconventional and non-pejorative ways. In his work in this period, propaganda refers to a non-epistemic strategy for transforming non-epistemic sources of motivation. For Du Bois, then, the task is to transform white unreason such that it can be directed more effectively to ends that we rationally know to be true: the affirmation of Black humanity. The object of transformation is therefore white unreason, not unreason itself. Unreason, Du Bois suggests, is permanent; we cannot replace the rule of unreason with reason, so the question is not whether, but rather, what kind of unreason we will have. To the extent that unreason motivates most individuals most of the time, Du Bois seeks to change the substantive commitments upheld by the basic structure of white moral psychology. Propaganda is the method, then, for transforming white unreason into an unreason that affirms Black humanity and, hence, a racially just society. Through “carefully planned and scientific propaganda” (Du Bois [1940] 1986, 679), white unreason can be transformed to presume racial equality, such that whites will be motivated to treat Black Americans as equals.

That Du Bois turns to art as a medium of propaganda is therefore no coincidence; as he famously declares in 1926, “All Art is propaganda and ever must be” (Du Bois [1926] 1986, 1000). As Gooding-Williams (2021, 14) rightly shows, Du Bois views the power of beautiful art in terms of its ability to “cast[] moral goodness in an unfamiliar light,” thereby undermining the ethical assumptions of white supremacists and dismantling racial hierarchy. In other words, art is a medium of propaganda because its non-epistemic features render it appropriate for transforming a non-epistemic entity such as white unreason. The power of art consists in the ability of beauty to transform white unreason—namely, its ability to reshape the customary, habitual, and unconscious cravings of whites away from racial domination. As a form of propaganda, then, art can move individuals to embrace truths of Black humanity and racial equality in a way that facts and arguments often fail to do.

While how, precisely, Du Bois thinks aesthetics has the power to transform white unreason is beyond the scope of this paper, what is significant here is why propaganda requires a long temporal horizon to take effect. As Du Bois sees it, insofar as propaganda can transform white unreason from presuming racial dominance to presuming racial equality, this transformation will take a very long time. Because white unreason is, as he puts it, an “inherited custom” consisting in “attitudes and habits . . . built up [over time],” they “cannot be changed by sudden assault” (Du Bois [1940], 1968, 696). If the problem of racial dominance were solely epistemic, then the solution would be solely epistemic; it would be quickly remedied once recognized. But because white unreason is not an epistemic problem, the remedies are neither epistemic nor quickly effective. Generations of institutional conditioning have reinforced the presumption for racial dominance such that it is now “deep-planted in the American mind” (Du Bois [1935c] 1995, 567). Du Bois ([1934] 1986) therefore makes clear that white unreason is so durable that efforts to transform white unreason through propaganda will require a similarly prolonged effort; as he sees it, it could require “ten centuries” (1247). In other words, given that the formation of white unreason is the product of multiple generations of institutional entrenchment, we should expect that its reformation will require a similarly prolonged period. White unreason is both malleable and durable; for this reason, the effort to transform white unreason through propaganda is both possible and requires multiple generations.

In fact, given the durability of white unreason, Du Bois (1935b) deems the effort to immediately transform the attitudes of white teachers and students “a silly waste of money, time, and temper,” for it is a “futile attempt to compel even by law a group to do what it is determined not to do” (329). As a result, Du Bois could declare in 1933, “Negro prejudice is something that is beyond question and will. It is a stark, true fact and little or nothing can be done about it at present” (Du Bois 1933a, 247). At first glance, the claim that racial prejudice is “a stark, true fact” such that “nothing can be done” may seem puzzling; it implies that racial prejudice is immutable and therefore unchangeable, thereby suggesting a political fatalism. However, the phrase “at present” modifies the statement that “nothing can be done,” indicating that if Du Bois is fatalistic about the unchangeability of racial prejudice, his fatalism is temporally conditioned. In other words, given that past and present social institutions have produced and reproduced white unreason, it cannot be immediately transformed. Accurately grasping the nature of white unreason entails recognizing its durability, such that those who strive for a racially just society are clear-eyed about the requisite timeline for its transformation. Du Bois ([1935c] 1995) therefore cautions his readers not to expect the immediate eradication of racial prejudice; “we cannot,” he writes, “hope for its early and complete disappearance” (567). As Du Bois puts it, the transformation of white unreason requires a “long siege” (Du Bois [1933b] 1968, 1019) that requires “many years, perhaps many generations” (Du Bois [1940], 1968, 776). As a result, he concludes, “[things] are not going to change in the lifetime of those now living” (Du Bois 1933a, 247).

Given that Black Americans ought not sacrifice their own survival and well-being while waiting for propaganda to transform white unreason, Du Bois ([1940] 1986, 776) insists, “there are certain things [Black Americans] must do for [their] own survival and self-preservation.” To this end, Du Bois advocates for voluntary self-segregation: the establishment of all-Black hospitals, schools, and businesses—including consumer cooperatives (Du Bois [1940], 1986, chs. 7, 9 passim)—to ensure access to quality healthcare, education, and financial stability. If the durability of white unreason is such that even desegregated institutions are racially discriminatory—thereby effectively denying Black Americans access to quality goods and services—then Black Americans must create and support their own institutions for such access. As Du Bois ([1934] 1986, 1242) declares, “The only thing that we not only can, but must do, is voluntarily and insistently to organize our economic and social power, no matter how much segregation it involves.” Voluntary self-segregation is therefore a Black response to the white refusal of equality grounded in white unreason; more specifically, it is a political strategy to be pursued by Black Americans in light of the fact that transforming white unreason is a “matter of long centuries and not years” (Du Bois [1933b] 1968, 1019). For Du Bois, the question of integration or segregation is not an unconditional principle, but rather, a pragmatic response to present facts; crucially, it is secondary to the primary value of Black survival and well-being.

Regarding schools, then, Du Bois’s view is as follows: given that school desegregation absent the transformation of white unreason prevents Black students from being properly educated, Black students should be educated in separate schools until such transformation occurs. Understood in this way, all-Black schools are an interim strategy for educating Black children in a society in which white unreason has not yet been transformed. As Du Bois (1935b) sees it, if “Negro children cannot receive a decent and sympathetic education in the white schools, and no Negro teachers can be employed, there is for us no choice,” and Black children ought to attend separate schools where Black teachers and peers can provide an environment that enables them to learn (329).

To be clear, this commitment to separate Black schools is not an absolute principle; as he declares, “Manifestly, no general and inflexible rule can be laid down” (Du Bois 1935b, 329). As Du Bois sees it, a Black parents’ decision to have their child educated in either a segregated or a mixed school is a response to present facts about white unreason—specifically, the willingness or unwillingness of whites to treat Black students with equal respect. The question is not, “Should we prefer mixed or segregated schools?” but rather, “Given present facts about white unreason, what are the best prospects for educating Black children?” Du Bois’s advocacy for separate Black schools is therefore a conditional response to the white refusal to treat Black children as equals. As mentioned earlier, Du Bois’s moral psychological account of white unreason is general—it explains what typically motivates most whites to act—and as such, it allows for exceptions. Du Bois (1935b) therefore allows for the possibility that, at present, a minority of whites are motivated to act according to what they know to be true—that Black Americans are not naturally inferior to white Americans—such that there may exist desegregated schools in which “there has been no tension in the schools; and Negro children have been decently treated” (329). In such instances, Du Bois is clear that there is no need to move a Black child into an all-Black school. However, his point is that at present, such instances are the exception rather than the rule. As white unreason is slowly transformed over generations, such instances will presumably become more common, such that desegregated schools will also be racially egalitarian.

More broadly, for Du Bois, separate institutions—whether schools, hospitals, or businesses—are a conditional response to the white refusal to live in relations of equality with Black Americans, such that if white unreason changes, there will no longer be a need for Black voluntary self-segregation. Emphasizing the conditionality of voluntary self-segregation, Du Bois ([1934] 1986) draws an analogy: “When my room-mate gets too noisy and dirty, I leave him; when my neighbors get too annoying and insulting I seek another home; when white Americans refuse to treat me as a man, I will cut my intercourse with white Americans to the minimum demanded by decent living” (1248). As the analogy makes clear, voluntary self-segregation is not an unconditional principle; if one’s neighbors are not noisy, dirty, annoying, or insulting—or at least not to an intolerable degree—then there is no reason to voluntarily self-segregate. Voluntary self-segregation is therefore a response to the white refusal to treat Black Americans with dignity and respect; specifically, it is a way for Black Americans to ensure their well-being in a racially unjust society.

So while Du Bois ([1940] 1968) is adamant that he “[does] not advocate segregation as the final solution of the race problem; exactly the contrary,” he insists that voluntary self-segregation is necessary for Black well-being while they work for and wait for white moral psychologies to be transformed (777). In other words, once Du Bois recognizes that social change—namely, the transformation of white unreason through propaganda—operates only over the long term, the question of how to live in the present becomes salient. Du Bois’s dual political strategies therefore responds to dual facts about the nature of white unreason: first, that white unreason is malleable, not immutable, and second, that white unreason is durable and, hence, not immediately malleable. In short, Du Bois remains committed to saving the souls of white folk even as he insists on the ensuring the well-being of the bodies and minds of Black folk. ⁴

Moreover, for Du Bois, Black political vision and strategy operate on a dual temporal horizon such that exclusively focusing on one at the expense of the other is a mistake. It is a mistake for Black Americans to exclusively engage in “the long siege” without also voluntarily self-segregating because doing so would compromise their present survival and well-being. But it is also a mistake for Black Americans to exclusively focus their energies on voluntary self-segregation and neglect the long-term work of propaganda because this forecloses the future possibility—however distant—of a racially egalitarian society. As Du Bois ([1940] 1968, 557) argues, “It would not do to concentrate all effort on economic well-being and forget freedom and manhood and equality.” Emphasizing the dual need for Black Americans to act to both ensure their well-being and create the conditions for a racially egalitarian future, Du Bois ([1940] 1968, 557) argues, “Negroes must live and eat and strive, and still hold unfaltering commerce with the stars.” In short, Du Bois’s shift away from emphasizing ignorance to emphasizing white unreason as a motivational source of racial dominance explains the dual temporality of Du Bois’s account of social change: over the long term, propaganda must be employed to transform white unreason and, in the meantime, voluntary self-segregation for ensuring Black survival and well-being.

Conclusion

How, then, would Du Bois interpret the meaning of the summer 2020 protests and their aftermath? The account offered here suggests that he would affirm those who posit that very little has changed because white supremacy is so durable that it cannot be quickly abolished. Moreover, he would argue that the persistence of white supremacy is rooted in white unreason that is the result of institutional socialization over generations. But if white unreason is durable, it is not immutable; for this reason, Du Bois would dispute the view that white supremacy is unchangeable forever. If white unreason has been shaped in one way, it can be reshaped in other ways. Du Bois would therefore affirm those who, during the protests, imagined the possibility of a racially egalitarian future, and he would argue that techniques like propaganda can transform white unreason to realize such a future. However, Du Bois would also challenge those who imagine that such a society is just around the corner and can be achieved within our lifetimes. By challenging assumptions about the nature of racial dominance in terms of white unreason as either forever unchangeable or easily abolished, Du Bois reconfigures the temporal horizons of his political vision and strategies. Given this, Du Bois suggests, Black Americans must develop strategies to protect their survival and well-being—strategies that may entail a deeper skepticism toward the politics of integration and the immediate viability of anti-racist exhortation.

Indeed, questions regarding the value of self-segregation, especially in schools, remain salient after Brown v. Board of Education. Looking back on his work for the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund—where he supervised over 300 school desegregation cases—Derrick Bell expressed disappointment with the effects of Brown. As Bell saw it, the value of Brown was more symbolic than substantive; as a result, he began to argue for educational equity over integrationist ideals. Observing the persistent racism perpetuated by white teachers and students against Black students in desegregated schools—and the response by some Black parents to withdraw their children from such contexts—Bell viewed the potential of separate schools to achieve what Brown could not: equal educational opportunity for Black children. Moreover, given his view that substantial disparities in funding school districts explained the educational gap between Black and white students, Bell (2004) focused his efforts on “desegregating the money” (161) in California, Texas, and New York. In this way, Bell’s work echoes the Du Boisian insistence on securing the educational prospects of Black children in a society characterized by racial dominance. Crucially, Bell’s commitments reflect a refusal to sacrifice the education of Black children to a merely symbolic racial equality in the post-Brown era. We can thus view such projects of voluntary self-segregation in light of a dual temporality of social change, rather than as a principled decision in favor of segregation over integration.

Recent events surrounding Nikole Hannah-Jones’s tenure case at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill are also instructive. Upon earning tenure in a contentious case—in which the UNC Board of Trustees initially refused to vote on her tenure case despite approval from the journalism school as well as the university’s tenure and promotion committee—Hannah-Jones declined the offer and announced her move to Howard University, where she has created the Center for Journalism and Democracy to train Black journalists. As Hannah-Jones (2021) remarked, “At some point when you have proven yourself and fought your way into institutions that were not built for you, when you’ve proven you can compete and excel at the highest level, you have to decide that you are done forcing yourself in.” With these words, Hannah-Jones expressed a Du Boisian sentiment; namely, that voluntary self-segregation is a legitimate response to the white refusal of equality. Despite the powerful allure of integrationist ideal that characterizes American public culture, then, Bell and Hannah-Jones suggest the dynamics that drove Du Bois to advocate for voluntary self-segregation have not yet disappeared.