Response to Melanye T. Price's review of In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America

Extract

In In the Shadow of Du Bois, I argue that Du Bois' early political thought, as mainly expressed in The Souls of Black Folk, turns on three critical claims: 1) that African American politics is a practice of group leadership—thus, a practice of group rule, or governance, for Du Bois interprets leadership as a form of rule, or governance; 2) that African American politics should take the form of political expressivism, such that it expresses the spiritual identity of the black folk; and 3) that African American struggles to counter white supremacy are best understood as struggles against social exclusion. In her review of In the Shadow, Melanye Price notes that the “book emphasizes” claims 1 and 2, yet neglects to discuss its treatment of 3, which is no less critical to the book's argument and to which I will return.