Race

Race Ethnicity and EducationAquatic Insects Vol. 14, No. 5, November 2011, 585–602

‘To break asunder along the lesions of race’1. The Critical Race Theory of W.E.B. Du Bois

Kamau Rashid* Department of Educational Foundations and Inquiry, National-Louis University, Chicago, USA In addition to its beginnings within legal scholarship, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is intimately aligned with the long tradition of African American social critique, which sought to interrogate the intractable nature of racism and White supremacy. Within this intellectual tradition, the works of W.E.B. Du Bois are of critical significance. Du Bois’ critique of racism, in addition to his theories of education, anticipate many key aspects of CRT. Additionally, Du Bois illuminates fruitful spaces that are of great relevance to contemporary scholars engaged in a critical analysis of race and racism in their global and domestic contexts, within both education and the broader society. Keywords: W.E.B. Du Bois; Critical Race Theory; education; racism; White supremacy

Many, if not all, of the key concerns of contemporary critical race theory are prefigured in Du Bois’s discourse on race and racism in ways that makes one wonder whether contemporary critical race theory is simply a continuation, or a contemporary version of Du Bois’s classical critical theory of race circulating under a new name. (Reiland Rabaka [2007] W.E.B. Du Bois and the Problems of the Twenty-First Century)

Drawing from the ‘deep well’ of Du Boisian thought2 In his treatise on African philosophy, Mdw Ntr, Jacob H. Carruthers (1995) revisits E. Franklin Frazier’s contention that African American scholars had failed to make a unique intellectual contribution to society, and had instead simply parroted the ideas of White intellectuals. Carruthers builds upon Frazier’s thesis by arguing that many African American scholars had generally

*Email: kamau.rashid@nl.edu

ISSN 1361-3324 print/ISSN 1470-109X online Ó 2011 Taylor &...