28 pages • 56-minute read
The Talented Tenth
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Background
Social Context: Racial Prejudice
At several points in the essay, Du Bois states that all races or ethnic groups operate hierarchically and that the top-down model applies to all human societies and groups. The difficulty for African Americans is that the talented tenth is not allowed to flourish because of legal proscription and race prejudice. This racial oppression underlies the essay but is especially notable at certain points. In discussing the slavery and abolition, Du Bois quotes Benjamin Banneker’s 1791 letter to Thomas Jefferson: “I am of the African race […] I now confess to you that I am not under that state of tyrannical thralldom and inhuman captivity to which too many of my brethren are doomed” (35). He quotes David Walker to a similar effect: “O, ye Christians, who hold us and our children in most abject ignorance and degradation that ever a people were afflicted with since the world began” (38). The normal top-down working of social improvement cannot operate for African American society because it has been kept in thralldom and ignorance. While there is no slavery in 1903, neither is there a level playing field.
The effects of slavery linger as seen in the statistical section of the essay. The total number of African American college graduates up to 1899 is only 2,304 and, of these, only 390 were educated at white institutions. While salaries and scholarships have supported white teachers, financial assistance has been largely denied to African Americans. The reason for this situation, and the reason Du Bois argues for college education, is race prejudice and legal proscription.
Scientific Context: Social Darwinism
Although rejected today by natural and social scientists, Social Darwinism was in Du Bois’s time a common intellectual lens for explaining social relations. Just as Darwin had theorized that biological entities are engaged in a struggle for existence in which only the fittest survive—a process of natural selection—a similar struggle is ongoing in the social realm. Some individuals are better adapted to succeed than others, and these people are the talented tenth of Du Bois’s title. Much of the difference between the education philosophies of Du Bois and Washington can be accounted for by Du Bois’s Social Darwinism. If Social Darwinism accurately portrays social relations, the worst educational policy would be to intentionally suppress or hinder the “fittest.” To some extent, Washington’s more broadly based vocational education rejects Social Darwinism, for it is aimed at what Du Bois calls the “Mass.”
Ironically, Social Darwinism is inherently conservative and tends to support the society as currently constituted. The argument that those with favored places in society have them because they are more fit suggests that power and influence are correctly distributed already. Du Bois’s Social Darwinism assumes, however, that all social groups have potential members of the talented tenth and, therefore, a free society should be non-discriminatory and provide a level playing field for all social groups. Once this is accomplished, the “fittest” will naturally rise to their rightful leadership position.
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