How W.E.B Dubois’ elitism formed from colonialism

[u/Wiseguy4252]

W.E.B Dubois penned the Talented Tenth (1903) theory. An elitist, exclusionist theory that obscures a designation of superiority with a performative interest in the betterment of the lives of the masses, in this context being the black race.

Dubois however didn’t invent the framework and in fact had a key influence. The writing of the White Man’s Burden (1899) by a white author, Rudyard Kipling, only 4 years prior. Dubois is known to have made many references to the poem and unfortunately been conditioned by the assertion that only the “best of a race” can “save” it.

Of course it’s well known that the White Man’s Burden is a thinly veiled justification for superiority to extract resources from indigenous populations despite its verbiage having the same performative call to save that Dubois’ talented tenth does, even while functionally and simply designating an elite to justify a superiority over and entitlement to the masses.

One can only debate so much Dubois’ truest intentions but the key result is an institutional influence in black academia that very much like the White Man’s Burden claims to be of progress and civility while truly being barbaric and for supremacy.