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Some of my thoughts on this article and this debate: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/08/26/when-w-e-b-du-bois-made-a-laughingstock-of-a-white-supremacist">https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/...
First of all, the article clearly tries to paint a picture of Stoddard harboring some mean spirited sense of racial superiority. I have read Stoddard works and I get no sense of that whatsoever. Indeed...the article itself notes some obvious contradictions with that narrative.
Stoddard clearly respected Dubois and he clearly felt threatened by the future of racial struggle and the fate of white people in that. You don& #39;t fear people you consider to be inferior. So why paint it that way?
I have never heard of this bizarre germ plasm thing and of course it sounds absurd. But biology and genetic science has come come long way since the 20s and it is more easy to claim that indeed races can never be the same.
I wonder what Dubois would say now? After blacks have not only had many decades of equality they have even been favored via affirmative action? If anything the black community has been in decline since his time.
And so indeed has the culture of white people. In fact we have become more african...manybof us mimic african behavior, consuming african music, etc. Carl jung predicted this as well.
And what of separate but equal? Of course it& #39;s not possible but this also isn& #39;t anyone& #39;s fault. African countries have had self determination for a good while and of course they are unable to reach the level of prosperity or peace that European countries did.
What would Dubois say of that, after some decades of new experience? I don& #39;t think things have panned out as he hoped. Black people have only become angry at white people after freedom and even favoritism has failed to make them equal.
The natural state of any human is to live around people like themselves. Racial co mingling seems to be detrimental to both races. This is what experience seems to teach us. And yes, one race is bound to have more power than the other and the result will inevitably be oppresion.
Dubois is certainly correct that whites have been great enemies of whites. So far much more than blacks. But this is simply because so far blacks have not wielded power. Where they have (south africa, haiti) the brutality is greater than anything whites do to each other.
It should be possible to admit these unfortunate truths without pretending that it& #39;s all about feeling superior or hating people. Such straw man emotions are typically injected in the dialogue to poison the well and make solutions impossible.
