DB Race, Capitalism and Global Imperialism Flashcards
What did Du Bois mean when he said “the problem of the twentieth century color line”?
Du Bois extended Frederick Douglass’s phrase to describe not just U.S. segregation but a global structure of racial domination, linking domestic and international politics. (To the Nations of the World, 1900)
How did Du Bois describe the global colour line in “The World and Africa” (1947)?
He called it “a protean and flexible system of economic exploitation, structured by racism,” operating through war, capital, debt, labour, and international markets.
What is “democratic despotism” according to Du Bois?
In The African Roots of War (1915), Du Bois described democratic states practising imperial oppression abroad while maintaining liberal ideals at home.
What did Du Bois say about Nazi atrocities and European civilisation?
“There was no Nazi atrocity of concentration camps… which the Christian civilization of Europe had not long been practicing against colored folk in the name of the Superior Race.” (1946)
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What economic role did Africa play in European wars?
Colonies offset class tensions in Europe by supplying wealth: “The Color Line began to pay dividends.”
How did Du Bois link capitalism to racism in Of the Culture of White Folk (1917)?
He argued “white labor is particeps criminis with white capital,” highlighting the complicity of white workers in racialised imperial exploitation.
How did Du Bois explain the causes of WW1 and WW2?
He viewed them as European rivalries for global empire; Germany acted because it lacked colonies and wanted to compete with Britain and France.
How did Du Bois criticise international institutions post-WW2?
In his 1945 memo to Roy Wilkins, he condemned the UN and Bretton Woods for ignoring that their leading members were still colonial empires exploiting “voiceless subjects.”
How did Du Bois criticise international institutions post-WW2?
Du Bois argued that even “independent” Black states like Haiti, Liberia, and Ethiopia remained dominated through debt and foreign capital.
How did Du Bois’s views on colonial elites evolve?
Initially hopeful, he later recognised the complicity of local bourgeoisie in imperial capitalism, especially during the Cold War.
What shift does Worlds of Color (1925) reveal in Du Bois’s thinking?
He reimagines the colour line as a site of potential solidarity: “that which has historically divided… [but] will eventually link darker peoples… in a global alliance that belts the world.”
What did Du Bois admire during his 1926 visit to the Soviet Union?
He saw an experiment in a new understanding of economic value, where the worker—not the capitalist—was central.
What did Du Bois learn from his 1920s travels to Africa?
In Liberia and Senegal, he discovered “a Great Truth… that efficiency and happiness do not go together in modern culture.”
What did Du Bois say about U.S. imperialism in his 1953 speech to the World Peace Council?
He said the U.S. “forgets that she was once a colony” and now imposes domination on Asia and Africa, unleashing a domestic “Reign of Terror” through anticommunism.
What did Du Bois mean by calling empire a “political and analytical cartography”?
He argued empire preceded and exceeded the nation-state, and refused to separate the domestic from the international.
How did Du Bois use the essay form politically?
Describing himself as “essaying,” he used essays like Darkwater, Dusk of Dawn, and Souls of Black Folk to revise and rework political ideas.
How did Du Bois trace the origins of racial capitalism?
He argued that slavery “played a major role in the establishment of capitalism in England and Europe.” (Prospect of a World without Race Conflict, 1944)
What did Du Bois mean by saying “labor was kept cheap and helpless because the white world despises ‘darkies’”?
He described how racial ideology justified the suppression of wages and exploitation of colonised labour. (Of the Culture of White Folk, p. 41)
In what two ways does Du Bois conceptualize whiteness in relation to white workers?
Specifically, Du Bois conceptualizes whiteness as a privileged position of social standing that has:
1) afforded white workers a public and psychological wage compensating them for their low economic wages; and
2) formed the basis of a cross-class, political alliance uniting white workers and capitalists against black workers (black slaves included).
What broader function does whiteness serve and how do white people maintain it?
He maintains that whiteness has historically functioned as a mechanism of power for recruiting white workers to police and reinforce the economic exploitation of black workers.
What is the focus of “The Souls of White Folk” in Du Bois’s analysis?
“The Souls of White Folk” can be read as Du Bois’s central contribution to the moral psychology of white supremacy; white supremacism as a morally vicious character trait—including, e.g., the dispositions passionately to hate black folk; to slander and murder black folk; and to believe that white folk are inherently better than black folk.
How does Du Bois explain the failure of Reconstruction?
Du Bois explains the “splendid failure” of Reconstruction and the genesis of the American racial order through his analysis of the cross-class political alliance of white workers and capitalists.
What does Du Bois emphasize in “The White World” chapter of Dusk of Dawn?
Du Bois complicates this earlier psychological portrait of the white supremacist, stressing the deeply ingrained persistence of her or his racist behaviour.
Du Bois argues, for example, that “the present attitude and action of the white world…is a matter of conditioned reflexes…subconscious trains of reasoning” (Du Bois, 1940, 87).
How does Du Bois analyze whiteness across his middle-period work (1920–1940)?
Considering Du Bois’s middle-period (roughly 1920–1940) oeuvre as a whole, Du Bois analyzes whiteness in multiple registers (material, psychological, spiritual)—thus, not exclusively in the political theoretical and moral psychological terms.
