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W.E.B. DU BOIS’ STUDY ‘THE PHILADELPHIA NEGRO’ AT 125 STILL
EXPLAINS ROOTS OF THE URBAN BLACK EXPERIENCE – SOCIOLOGIST ELIJAH
ANDERSON TELLS WHY IT SHOULD BE ON MORE READING LISTS  
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Elijah Anderson
February 28, 2024
The Conversation
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_ W.E.B. Du Bois is widely known for his civil rights activism, but
many sociologists argue that he has yet to receive due recognition as
the founding father of American sociology. _

A mural dedicated to Du Bois and the Old Seventh Ward is painted on
the corner of 6th and South streets in Philadelphia, Paul
Marotta/Getty Images

 

_W.E.B. Du Bois is widely known for his civil rights activism, but
many sociologists argue
[[link removed]] that he has yet to
receive due recognition as the founding father of American sociology
[[link removed]].
His groundbreaking study, “The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study
[[link removed]],”
was published in 1899 and exhaustively detailed the poor social
conditions of thousands of Black Philadelphians in the city’s
historic Seventh Ward neighborhood._

_We spoke with Elijah Anderson [[link removed]], Sterling
Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Yale
University, about the importance of Du Bois’ seminal study and why
it’s still relevant for Philadelphians 125 years later._

HOW DID THE ‘PHILADELPHIA NEGRO’ STUDY COME ABOUT?

Much of Philadelphia’s elite of the day believed that the city was
going to the dogs, and that the reason was the huge influx of Black
people from the South. Susan Wharton, a philanthropist and the wife of
Joseph Wharton – after whom the Wharton School is named – and
then-provost at the University of Pennsylvania Charles Harrison
invited Du Bois to come to Philadelphia to study Philadelphia’s
Black population and try to find answers to this problem.

Du Bois accepted their offer, which came with a small stipend, and
came to Philadelphia along with his new bride, Nina Gomer. They
settled in the Old Seventh Ward in a local settlement house, located
at Sixth and Waverly streets, down the street from Mother Bethel AME,
the famous Black church. Du Bois then set about studying the Seventh
Ward, known for its concentration of the Black population. These
people lived in the alleys and streets adjacent to the wealthy white
people for whom they worked as servants.

[Family portrait of W.E.B. Du Bois, his wife Nina, and their baby son
Burghardt in 1898.]

Family portrait of W.E.B Du Bois, his wife, Nina, and their baby son
Burghardt in 1898. W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special
Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts
Amherst Libraries
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Due to Du Bois’ upbringing and Harvard education, his bearing was
that of the elite. While conducting his field work, he at times
dressed in spats and a suit and tie.

Du Bois approached his subjects as an objective social scientist. He
wanted to understand the condition of Philadelphia’s Black
population and then provide his report to the white elite whom he
believed would use his work to improve the condition of Black people,
both within Philadelphia and beyond.

CAN YOU EXPLAIN HIS IDEA OF THE BENEVOLENT DESPOT?

This term is based on Du Bois’ original premise: that the inequality
between the living conditions of Blacks and whites could be rectified
by the wealthy people who controlled the city. He regarded these
leaders as despots due to the power they wielded, but also believed
them to be benevolent as well as rational. Du Bois observed the Irish
and Scottish immigrants who were employed in certain industries. He
wondered why these companies would fail to employ Black people, as
well, and concluded that they must simply be ignorant. After all, in
his mind, these were benevolent people as well as rich and powerful
– and most importantly, they were rational. So why would they employ
the Irish and Scots, but not the Black people? This was a critical
question for Du Bois, and one he was determined to answer through his
study.

[Book cover of 'The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study' by W.E.B. Du
Bois]
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Elijah Anderson wrote the introduction to the 1995 and 2023 editions
of ‘The Philadelphia Negro.’ University of Pennsylvania Press
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However, as the study progressed, Du Bois began to realize that the
problem was much more complicated than he’d originally assumed. He
realized that the so-called benevolent despots may not be so
benevolent after all, focusing on their own financial interests. These
included pitting Irish and Scottish workers against Black people to
keep wages low, but also a simple preference of white workers over
Black workers.

Halfway through the study, Du Bois pours out a soliloquy of
disappointment. He declares that there is, in fact, no benevolent
captain of industry, because if such a person existed, he wouldn’t
let these Black boys and girls fester in poverty and crime.

He writes:

“If now a benevolent despot had seen the development, he would
immediately have sought to remedy the real weakness of the Negro’s
position, i.e., his lack of training; and he would have swept away any
discrimination that compelled men to support as criminals those who
might support themselves as workmen.

"He would have made special effort to train Negro boys for industrial
life and given them a chance to compete on equal terms with the best
white workmen; arguing that in the long run this would be best for all
concerned, since by raising the skill and standard of living of the
Negroes he would make them effective workmen and competitors who would
maintain a decent level of wages. He would have sternly suppressed
organized or covert opposition to Negro workmen.

"There was, however, no benevolent despot, no philanthropist, no
far-seeing captain of industry to prevent the Negro from losing even
the skill he had learned or to inspire him by opportunities to learn
more.”

This is also where Du Bois began to see and clarify the situation as a
problem of racism. He doesn’t use the word “racism” – that
word did not exist at the time – but he speaks in terms of racial
preferences and discrimination.

HOW ARE HIS FINDINGS RELEVANT TO PHILADELPHIANS TODAY?

“The Philadelphia Negro” remains a powerful work. It depicts the
social organization of the Black community, and especially the Black
class structure of Du Bois’ day. It also utilizes the technique we
know today as “cohort analysis
[[link removed]]” – the idea that
social conditions affecting a group are also impactful to the
individual, and that what happens to the group is a function of
historic moments of society.

Du Bois’ ethnographic descriptions of Black people living in
isolated communities after the end of slavery and migrating to these
cities presages the dire conditions in inner-city communities of
today, many of which are still largely Black.

Additionally, the role of European immigration in Du Bois’ day
played a critical role in undermining the position of Black people in
society. In the context of “white over Black,” each successive
wave of immigration from Europe since the end of the Civil War
typically worked to undermine the position of the emerging Black
middle class.

Du Bois pointed this out back in 1899. He observed that employers
preferred white immigrants from Europe over Black people. The
benevolent despot Du Bois hoped to reach ignored his work, with
implications for Philadelphia race relations to this day.

[W.E.B. Du Bois seated at desk in office at Atlanta University in
1909]
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W.E.B. Du Bois seated in his office at Atlanta University in 1909.
W.E.B. Du Bois Papers, 1803-1999, Special Collections and University
Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries
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HOW DID IT INFORM YOUR OWN WORK AS A SOCIOLOGIST?

When I was a sociology graduate student at the University of Chicago
in the 1970s, “The Philadelphia Negro” was not required reading.
But later, I taught a summer course at Northwestern University about
Du Bois and, like so many young Black scholars of my generation, I was
deeply inspired by his work.

Afterwards, when I was recruited by Swarthmore College – located 11
miles outside Philadelphia – I felt honored to reside near the city
where Du Bois had conducted his work. I often traveled to Philadelphia
to walk through the neighborhoods where he’d worked. Ultimately, the
University of Pennsylvania – the very place that had originally
recruited Du Bois to conduct his study – offered me a position. I
moved to the city and began conducting ethnographic studies. In some
sense, I followed in the footsteps of Du Bois.

In fact, my entire body of ethnographic work grows out of some of the
questions Du Bois raises, and the unresolved problems he uncovers.
“Streetwise
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focuses on the sociology of gentrification and its implications for
both white and Black people living in gentrifying neighborhoods.
“Code of the Street
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violence that occurs in inner-city neighborhoods, as well as the issue
of policing and the abdication of the police. After that, I began to
deal with some of the issues that brought different races together.
“The Cosmopolitan Canopy
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of Philadelphia’s Rittenhouse Square and the Reading Terminal Market
and Center City. Most recently, in 2022, I published “Black in White
Space
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a fine-grained ethnographic portrait of how systemic racism operates
in everyday life.

All these books, based on studies that were conducted in Philadelphia,
stem from the inspiration of reading Du Bois as a graduate student.

[View of empty street in Kensington neighborhood of North
Philadelphia]
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Philadelphia has more residents living in poverty than any other big
city in the U.S. Spencer Platt/Getty Images
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WHY SHOULD PHILADELPHIANS READ THIS BOOK?

The book is a seminal work, and while it has influenced many Black
sociologists, it has not yet received the attention it deserves
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However, an increasing number of scholars, both Black and white, are
beginning to grapple with Du Bois’ work.

Philadelphians should read this book to become enlightened about the
city’s history and how it relates to the dire circumstances of the
city’s impoverished population of today.

The Philadelphia economy is undergoing a period of profound transition
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an economy based on manufacturing to one based increasingly on service
and high technology, including robotics, computers and social media.
Jobs and financial opportunities are sent away from Philadelphia
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to non-metropolitan America and to underdeveloped nations around the
world. As a result, many residents of the city have become dislocated
economically; 22% of the city’s population is impoverished
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and a majority of them are Black
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Hence, the condition of the disenfranchised underclass whom Du Bois
regarded as the “submerged tenth” has become remarkably more
complicated and dire.

This complex mix of factors creates a good deal of crime and
alienation, which feeds into the dominant narrative that our cities
are falling apart – and that it’s the fault of this
disenfranchised underclass, this “submerged tenth.” This is
blatantly incorrect. The problems facing today’s poor inner-city
residents stem from systemic racism
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and the structure of capital
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not the individuals trapped inside that structure.

Strikingly, despite being written over a century ago, “The
Philadelphia Negro” anticipates not only the condition of today’s
poor inner-city Blacks, but also the unwillingness or the inability of
today’s “benevolent despots” to rectify or even address the
situation. We see Du Bois’ “submerged tenth” in today’s drug
dealers, drug addicts and the persistently impoverished Black
community. And we see his not-so-benevolent despots in politicians who
would rather blame the victims than take any steps to improve their
lot.[The Conversation]

Elijah Anderson
[[link removed]],
Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, _Yale University
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This article is republished from The Conversation
[[link removed]] under a Creative Commons license. Read
the original article
[[link removed]].

* W.E.B. DuBois
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* Black History
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* sociology
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* Racism
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