|
DuBois: The State and The War
Michael Williams ‘04
On Monday, March 17 a lecture was initiated
focusing on W.E.B. DuBois and the current national and international political
climate when Dr. Anthony Montiero, associate professor of history at University
of the Sciences in Philadelphia delivered the lecture titled “Race
and the Racialized State: A DuBoisian Interrogation.”
The interrogation begins with Montiero’s
assertion that “the linkage between the legacy of slavery, including
the persistence of the African mores inherent in black family life, and
lack of fit with English family practices and the behavior of labor markets
often biased in their behavior by cultural influences which privilege
the majority and exclude or otherwise, discriminate against non-white
minorities.” Moreover, this point could have been expanded, according
to Montiero, with reference to the question of when did the influences
of slavery on the impoverishment of Blacks abate?
Montiero further asserts that it is folly
to consider that such influences of slavery have ceased in the last century.
Presumably, the characteristic of the impoverishment of such individuals
accompanied them from the rural areas to the cities. Indeed, he states
that the earliest indication of this linkage is found in the study of
The Philadelphia Negro by W.E.B. DuBois in 1896, that the dynamic which
he documented, of formerly enslaved Blacks, devoid of capital, immigrating
into larger cities of the North and South and as such, defining the character
of Black enclaves of those cities as Wards of deep intractable poverty
and social disorganization, continued for most of the following Century
- and continues even today. This is the "missing narrative,"
said Montiero, in debates about the causes for the prevalence of poverty
among Blacks.
According to Montiero, “the social
disorganization of the Black family was part of the legacy of slavery
and the way in which the labor market kept Blacks situated in marginal,
low-income occupations. Even then, in the late 1930s, nearly ninety percent
of Black males were in the labor force, these meager incomes simply did
not allow for massive acquisition of a substantial footing in the economy
without considerable assistance from government programs and policies."
|
|
