1897: W.E.B. Du Bois
Challenging Prevailing Racist Views
W.E.B. Du Bois around age 50
Source: Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs
In 1897, a rising African American leader William Edward Burghardt Du Bois accepted a position at the historically Black college, Atlanta University. Two years later he published one of his seminal works, The Philadelphia Negro, where he discussed his research and findings after spending two years studying African American communities in Philadelphia. His work challenged prevailing racist views and laid out for the sociological field a more scientifically rigorous method of conducting social research.
Shaping the Field of Sociology
Du Bois shaped sociology into the scientifically rigorous discipline we know today (Morris, 2015, p. 2). Du Bois described early 1900 sociology as filled with “vague statements and vast generalizations” (Green, Wortham, 2018, p. 58). In contrast to white scholars at the time, Du Bois argued that race was a social construction and asserted that “‘the Negro problem was a matter of systematic investigation and intelligent understanding. … The cure for it was knowledge based on scientific investigation’” (Green, Wortham, 2018, p. 58). As a result of his belief that “social conditions constituted the foundations of race oppression and white supremacy,” he “insisted that the newly emerging social sciences be built on careful empirical research focused on human action in order to pass the test as genuine science” (Morris, 2015, p. 3).
As noted by historian Aldon D. Morris (2015),
Because he believed that an authentic social science was possible and that inferior and superior races did not exist, Du Bois was the first social scientist to establish a sociological laboratory where systematic empirical research was conducted to determine the scientific causes of racial inequality. In this manner, Du Bois treated claims of inherent race superiority as hypotheses to be accepted or rejected on the basis of data collected through the best scientific methods available. Given his approach, Du Bois decried any racial findings stemming from racial prejudice and vested interest. Therefore, as the twentieth century opened, Du Bois continued to develop a sociology whose mission was to interject science into the emerging field by relying on data and the execution of scientific research based on empirical methodologies. (p. 3)
Du Bois, therefore, fundamentally altered the trajectory of modern sociology, and he did so while fighting systemic racism. Through introducing a rigorous empirical methodology, he effectively led the way to dismantle the flawed and racist system that claimed blacks created their own problems. As such, Du Bois remains one of the pre-eminent sociologists of the twentieth century, and his work continues to influence the field today. causes of racial inequality.