Applying Modernity to Dubois

 After reading W. E. B. DuBois’s Of the Culture of White Folk, I realized that concepts from my Integrated Perspective’s class titled “Modernism and Crisis” would help deepen and further explain what DuBois meant in his writing. The main principle behind “Modernism and Crisis” is that deep crises emerge in societies because of modernity, or the development of objects and beliefs into a more modern version. Dubois speaks on this concept most directly on page 436 when he states, “Laboriously the Middle Ages built its rules of fairness–equal armament, equal notice, equal conditions. What do we see today? Machine guns against assegais, conquest sugared with religion…all this with vast applause at the superiority of white over black soldiers!” (DuBois 436). The distress and frustration that Dubois feels is exactly why modernism is so closely related with crisis. Because, as things advance and become more modern, the disparity between the people who have access to these modern adaptations and those who don’t becomes more apparent. And the more apparent it becomes, the more issues it causes. To Dubois, the further technologically advanced the U.S. military becomes, the more casualties of war, and wars themselves, there will be. 

Furthermore, the United State’s modernity presents another issue according to Dubois, which is the ignorance of previous wars and their severity. Dubois agrees that “War is horrible” (436), but he questions why wars are only now considered horrible when they have “...equal conditions, equal armament and equal waste of wealth, white men are fighting white men with surgeons and nurses hovering near?” (436). He compares this to the numerous wars that were previously fought unfairly and unjustly, usually against a minority group, and asks, “...were these not horrible too?” (436). Modernity has granted the United States a sense of security and supremacy while also revealing the disconnect the nation refuses to realize between white people and minority demographics. 

However, this is not the only place where Dubois touches upon an aspect of modernity and the dilemmas that come with it. The most significant takeaway from Dubois’s argument is that the reason why Europe is the greatest nation is not that it is more gifted, nobler, or simply better than other nations but because of its foundations. Foundations that Dubois is quick to point out were built on the suppression, exploitation, and submission of cultures and people deemed lesser than Europeans. The single contributing factor to European success and dominance was “Primitive Accumulation,” a term coined in my IP course, which was the theft of resources, land, people, and culture of Africans, Asians, and the Mediterranean through the use of extreme violence. This exploitation of a “lesser” race is central to modernism’s ideas, and the “crisis,” in this instance, is a feature that Dubois points out. He claims that Europe is “the world fool” because “where she has ignored that past and forgotten and sneered at it she has shown the cloven hoof of poor crucified humanity” (438). Essentially, by using the terms granted to me by my IP course, Dubois’s message comes across clearer than before. The presentation of modernity is the supremacy and dominance that Europe has had in the world for thousands of years. Europe was consistently at the forefront of advancements, developments, and economic accomplishments, which continually revealed the nation’s modernity. However, the crisis that must follow is the utter lack of acknowledgment that Europe–and the United States by extension–exploited and forced submission onto all other ethnicities and races and continues to ignore their faults while still discriminating against minorities. Dubois fears Europe’s and the United State’s modernity regarding warfare and greed, which causes the crisis of the greater powers creating wars against each other instead of against lesser powers. In conclusion, applying the idea of “Modernity and Crisis” assists in explaining Dubois’s issue with the culture of white people. 

Works Cited: 

Bois, W. E. (1917). Of the Culture of White Folk. The Journal of Race Development, 7(4), 434. https://doi.org/10.2307/29738213