In The Souls of Black Folk, W. E. B. Du Bois developed the elitist, assimilationist idea of the Talented Tenth, which refers to the minority of Black people whose skill, intelligence, and refinement will supposedly help improve the status and conditions of Black people as a whole. This idea is part of the broader assimilationist concept of uplift suasion, the notion that nonblack people could be persuaded out of racist ideas by encountering examples of talented, refined, and high-achieving Black people. Kendi shows how Du Bois’s commitment to the idea of the Talented Tenth was rooted in his own personal life. From the first moment he experienced racist social exclusion at the age of 10, Du Bois was determined to prove himself equal to white people by achieving extraordinary feats. This included being the first Black person to earn a PhD from Harvard, studying abroad at the world-famous University of Berlin, and establishing himself as a leader of the Black community through his role as editor of the NAACP’s journal The Crisis.
But Du Bois’s own life also highlights why the Talented Tenth was always doomed to fail as an antiracist strategy. The fact that Du Bois earned a PhD from Harvard, for example, did not persuade people that Black people were the intellectual equals of white people. At best, it encouraged them to treat him as a tokenized “extraordinary” Black man, and at worst it led them to denounce the whole situation on the basis that a Black man with a Harvard PhD was a joke or an outrage. Ultimately, the failure of the Talented Tenth strategy confirms Kendi’s message that racism cannot be persuaded or educated away. This is a principle that Du Bois himself came to accept later in life, when he rejected the Talented Tenth, uplift suasion, and other aspects of his earlier, assimilationist thinking. At the same time, the fact that the principle of the Talented Tenth still has an impact on society today (although the phrase “Talented Tenth” is seldom used) shows how racist ideas—even when they are illogical and wrong—tend to have a remarkably enduring power.
Talented Tenth Quotes in Stamped from the Beginning
Uplift suasion had been deployed for more than a century, and its effect in 1903? American racism may have never been worse. But neither its undergirding racist ideas, nor its historical failure, nor the extraordinary Negro construction ensuring its continued failure had lessened the faith of reformers. Uplift suasion had been and remained one of the many great White hopes of racist America.
The Talented Tenth’s attempt at media suasion was a lost cause from the start. While “negative” portrayals of Black people often reinforced racist ideas, “positive” portrayals did not necessarily weaken racist ideas. The “positive portrayals could be dismissed as extraordinary Negroes, and the “negative” portrayals could be generalized as typical. Even if the racial reformers managed to one day replace all “negative” portrayals with “positive portrayals in the mainstream media, then, like addicts, racists would then turn to other suppliers.
Talented Tenth Symbol Timeline in Stamped from the Beginning
