Du Boisian Sociology after Du Bois: Reading Black Sociology as Postcolonial Sociology (Co-Sponsored Event with the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies)

Speakers:

Presenter: Ali Meghji, University of Cambridge

Interlocutor: Fatma Müge Göçek, University of Michigan

Abstract:

Over the past years, sociologists have highlighted Du Bois’ postcolonial approach to the sociology of race (Itzigsohn and Brown 2020). Focusing on his analysis of the global colorline, sociologists have highlighted how Du Bois’ approach to race offered a distinctive tradition of ‘Du Boisian sociology’, which stressed the importance of historical and transnational analyses of the relations between racism, colonialism, modernity, and capitalism (Morris 2022). The onus now falls on the sociological community to track the development of Du Boisian sociology beyond Du Bois’ work. My paper attempts to address this development of ‘Du Boisian sociology after Du Bois’ by focusing on two figures: Franklin Frazier, and John Gibbs St Clair Drake. While both Frazier and Drake are often presented as being micro-ethnographers of American society, I highlight how they both developed global, comparative, and historical approaches to race, consequently developing the Du Boisian tradition. Indeed, both Frazier and Drake made regular use of Du Bois’ theory of the global colorline, arguing that there were fundamental relations between the conditions of Black Americans with those who were colonized by European empires. Drawing on archival materials from the Schomburg Center and Howard University, I highlight that both Frazier and Drake argued that racism in America was just one piece in a global jigsaw puzzle; the task of the sociologist of race, they argued, was to understand how all of the pieces of this puzzle fit together, not just the American component. Both Frazier and Drake thus advocated for comparative and historical analysis of race. Frazier did this himself in his theory of ‘race contacts in the modern world’, where he compared the workings of racism in America with those in Brazil and Europe; in doing so, Frazier highlighted the global flows of racial meanings and practices. Likewise, Drake adopted a transnational approach to understanding racial segregation and violence, examining such processes not only in inner-city Chicago, but also across Britain, the British Caribbean, and West Africa.

I contend that reading these early advocates of the Black sociological tradition as being essentially postcolonial sociologists is the logical step forward. Such a postcolonial focus allows us to understand how figures such as Drake and Frazier were not just theorizing about race in America, but also about how race and racism developed in the remit of European empires, and how this colonial racism thus became connected to the American racial order.