Building Black Wealth: Understanding the Limits of Black Capitalism

By Robert Raymond, 

originally published by Shareable

June 23, 2022

Beginning in the 19th and 20th century, during the United States’ reconstruction era that followed the American Civil War, an important debate emerged in this country. It was during the era after slavery was officially abolished — after Union troops arrived in Galveston, Texas on June 19th, 1865 — what we now commemorate as Juneteenth — to spread the word. The debate, that in many ways is still alive and well, went something like this: what is the best way to end class and racial injustice in the United States and what is the role of Black leadership in this?

Two leaders of the Black community during this period , W.E.B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington, can be seen as the two main voices of this debate representing each side.

Booker T. Washington believed that Black people should concentrate on elevating themselves through hard work and material prosperity. His beliefs were very much rooted in a belief of individualism and working within the capitalist system to build Black wealth.

On the other side, W.E.B. Du Bois rejected Washington’s strategy. Instead, he advocated political action and a civil rights agenda — a much more systemic and collective vision of a path forward.

This debate is still very much alive in this country and has been taken up by many individual thinkers and organizations. The bifurcation can largely be seen as a disagreement on whether or not racial justice is achievable under a capitalist system — whether Black capitalism can lead to the liberation of Black people in the United States.

Du Bois’s legacy was picked up by many more radical thinkers in the mid-20th century, such as the Black Panther Fred Hampton, who argued that: “We don’t think you fight fire with fire best; we think you fight fire with water best. We’re going to fight racism not with racism, but we’re going to fight with solidarity. We say we’re not going to fight capitalism with black capitalism, but we’re going to fight it with socialism.”

Another thinker who carries the legacy of Du Bois and Hampton is Francisco Pérez, Executive Director of the Center for Popular Economics, who has recently written a piece that furthers the arguments against Black capitalism and for a more socialistic, solidaristic, and collectivist approach to Black liberation.

In his piece, Pérez argues that there is a broad conflation within our present-day capitalist society between the success of individual members of certain oppressed and marginalized groups and their collective success and liberation. This is particularly true when it comes to Black people and their liberatory struggles. Too often, the successes of individual people — Oprah, or LeBron James, for example — or their rise to certain leadership positions, take Barack Obama — are seen as collective successes, whereas, when it comes to the material conditions of all Black people, these individual successes don’t have a significant impact.

What are the dangers of this conflation between individual and collective success? Can Black liberation be achieved through individual successes within capitalism — through Black capitalism — as Booker T. Washington suggested? Or can true liberation for Black people in the United States only emerge through a collective struggle against racial capitalism?

Francisco Pérez is the Executive Director of the Center for Popular Economics and author of the recent piece in Nonprofit Quarterly, “How Do We Build Black Wealth? Understanding the Limits of Black Capitalism.”

You can listen to the full Upstream Conversation below to dive deeper into this topic and learn about what building real Black wealth could look like.

This article originally appeared on Shareable.net.

Teaser photo credit: Bust of W. E. B. Du Bois at Clark Atlanta University. 

By Hildabast – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=58794420

ERIC EJ905153: The W. E. B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington Debate: Effects upon African American Roles in Engineering and Engineering Technology

https://archive.org/details/ERIC_EJ905153

The messages of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. DuBois could not have been more diverse. The philosophical rivalry between Washington and DuBois has deep historical roots. To be on the same side fighting for the same purpose, progress, and uplifting of the Black race, these two Black intellectuals harbored radically divergent views on how to assist African Americans to free themselves from their often subhuman conditions. Both men were aware that technological advancement was of foremost importance to the advancement of African Americans. Washington's (1901) "Up From Slavery" and DuBois' (1903) "The Souls of Black Folks" were immediately hailed as classic commentary due to their efforts to address the then "Negro" problem in America. There were a number of Black Americans who made a valiant effort to mitigate poverty, illiteracy, racial discrimination, high mortality rates, and other desolate conditions that plagued many African Americans, particularly at the turn of the century. However, due to their influential appeal among certain constituencies, both Washington and DuBois garnered ample attention from many segments of the American intelligence, many of which were European in ethnic origin. Thus, acknowledgment from the White power structure (this was particularly true in the case of Washington) provided both men a platform to promote their message. In this article, the authors discuss the effects of the debate upon African American roles in engineering and engineering technology. Both Washington and DuBois were aware that the need for African Americans to become technologically literate was paramount. However, whereas Washington advocated a hands-on external approach, DuBois promoted a paternalistic form of advancement of the Black race. Both men's philosophies are still being argued and applied in the technological arena today.

ERIC ED041974: A Syllabus for the Study of Selective Writings by W. E. B. Dubois.

https://archive.org/details/ERIC_ED041974/page/n23/mode/2up

This syllabus or teacher's guide to the life and works of Dr. W.E.B. Dubois has the following organization. An introductory section provides eulogies and tributes from important black and white leaders focusing on his stature as an educator, editor, sociologist, historian, statesman, social prophet, and race leader. The main body of the syllabus details references to writings of major importance, such as his 21 books, Atlanta Studies, editorials, essays, and creative work, and to major topics, such as peace, class struggle, lynching, education, civil rights, race pride, black power, colonialism, and voluntary separation. Aphorisms and short quotations are also included in this section. The address delivered by the Rev. William H. Melish at the Memorial Service of the late Dr. Dubois in Accra, Ghana, on Sunday, September 29, 1963 completes this section. An appendix carries a chronology of Dr. Dubois' life and accomplishments, and a bibliography grouped as books, magazine articles, pamphlets, chapters in anthologies, the 21 books, unpublished works, and biographies. (RJ)

 

Double-Consciousness

W. E. B. DuBois uses the concepts of ‘the veil’ and ‘double-consciousness’ to explain the peculiar conditions within which African Americans find themselves in the United States and the specific tools at their disposal to understand (and hopefully dismantle) those conditions. The existence of African Americans ‘behind the veil’ of segregation is hidden from the view of most white folk, but those who live behind it also move in the ‘white’ world. As such, they have knowledge about their own lives, about the functioning of the veil, and about the activities of those who live on the other side of the veil as well. The double-consciousness that ensues from being both an African-American and an American provides the basis for deeper insights into the social realm and the possibility for more effective actions against the systems of domination in place.

 

Essential Reading:

W.E.B. DuBois ‘Of Our Spiritual Strivings’ in The Souls of Black Folk

W.E.B. DuBois ‘Of the Faith of the Fathers’ in The Souls of Black Folk

  

Further Reading:

Gilroy, Paul ‘Cheer the Weary Traveller, W.E.B. Du Bois, Germany and the Politics of (Dis)placement’ The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness

 

Questions:

How does ‘double-consciousness’ work as an analytical category to make sense of the world?

What role does ‘experience’ have to play in understanding ‘double-consciousness’?

How can ‘double-consciousness’ help us to understand social inequality (and to do something about it)?

Can those in front of the veil understand ‘double-consciousness’? Does this matter?

 

Submitted by Gurminder K Bhambra

https://globalsocialtheory.org/

Shirley DuBois and Scholars of Color Resistance Efforts Parallel 2025 Visa Struggles

Daniel Falcone

 March 31, 2025

FacebookTwitterRedditBlueskyEmail

W.E.B. Du Bois, Wikipedia.

March 27, 2025, marked 48 years since the death of Shirley Graham DuBois, the prominent African American writer, scholar, and social activist. She was the widow of the prolific academic W.E.B. Du Bois. As her legacy as an advocate for racial equality, Pan-Africanism, and social justice continues, it’s important to reflect on her substantial role in the shaping of the political landscape, particularly her resisting the United States Justice Department, who on May 5, 1970 denied her entry into the country citing the McCarran-Walter Act. This history provides an antecedent to the modern-day and current struggles associated with the U.S. visa system, especially when it involves politically marginalized people involved in contentious politics.

DuBois, a brilliant playwright and artist, was active in the international struggle for racial equality. After the death of her husband in 1963, she continued to “loudly challenge anticommunism” and argued for African liberation and joined in the fight against colonialism and imperialism. She founded the journal Freedomways as its first general editor and was particularly vocal about the detriments of American foreign policy, along with the mistreatment of black people. Having lived in Ghana from 1961-1966, she became a globally prominent figure and campaigned for Pan-Africanism and spoke out against neo-colonialism and US foreign interventions, particularly in both Vietnam and Africa.

Shirley DuBois’s history intersects with the broader political climate of the 1960s and 70s when the U.S. government became increasingly concerned with dissent and anti-imperialist movements and activities. In 1970, after spending several years in Africa, DuBois sought to return to the United States after receiving an invitation to visit Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee as noted by historian Gerald Horne in Race Woman. The United States Justice Department overruled the State Department and denied her entry however, citing concerns over her political beliefs, particularly her anti-imperialist work and her condemnations of state violence and war. The department had long considered both her and her husband as having “associations with numerous subversive organizations.” Her experiences were similar to one Gisela Mandel, wife of the Belgian Marxist economist Ernest Mandel, who was denied permission to enter the United States to speak at an antiwar rally at Columbia University on April 11, 1970. All of this mostly coincided alongside the political persecution of a very young 27-year-old reporter from the Black Dwarf by the name of Tariq Ali.

The U.S. establishment viewed DuBois as a threat due to her public associations with radical political ideas, including her admiration for socialism, communism, and larger decolonization movements. The U.S. government’s actions were part of a wider strategy during the Cold War to suppress voices critical of U.S. foreign policy, especially resistance linked to left-wing ideologies. Long before 1970, the DuBois tandem “faced the worst of the [FBI’s] Cold War strictures.”

In his earlier years of journalism, Abdeen Jabara of the Intercontinental Press reported on Shirley DuBois winning her visa fight as did C. Gerald Fraser of the New York Times on August 16, 1970. C. Eric Lincoln, President of the Board of the Black Academy of Arts and Letters, explained how the Immigration and Naturalization Service had announced its reversal of refusing Shirley DuBois a visa. He wrote, “in light of the reason for which Mrs. DuBois now wishes to visit the United States, this service has concurred in the recommendation of the Department of State.” The reversal was the result of a large public outcry and organized resistance within the Black community to the Justice Department’s initial overruling.

National security concerns have historically been used to justify the denial or revocation of visas for scholars such as Shirley DuBois, a practice that continues today. Fast forward to 2025, where similar patterns of revocations and crackdowns continue to affect those who challenge (or don’t even challenge) U.S. foreign or domestic policies. The collection of visas (Secretary of State Marco Rubio has confirmed over 300 revoked visas) and their restrictions as a political weapon remains prevalent, crucially for individuals with dissenting views. Much like Shirley DuBois’s historical experience, individuals with controversial or politically sensitive views or statuses face heightened scrutiny — which may jeopardize their ability to enter or remain in America. For instance, activists critical of U.S. military actions in the Middle East, Africa, or Latin America, or those who oppose Israeli occupation, may find themselves subjected to detainment and deportations.

Mahmoud Khalil, the permanent resident green-card holder and Columbia University graduate student that was arrested after participating in pro-Palestinian protests highlights this ongoing issue. Another example is the case of Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese professor and doctor from Brown University who was deported due to her alleged “sympathetic photos and videos” associating her with Hezbollah. While no charges were filed against Alawieh, her political influences and interests were enough to justify her deportation under the pretext of “national security.” Just as Civil Rights organizations rallied around Shirley DuBois, Alawieh received support from The Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) who indicated that:

Deporting lawful immigrants like Dr. Alawieh without any basis undermines the rule of law and reinforces suspicion that our immigration system is turning into an anti-Muslim, white supremacist institution that seeks to expel and turn away as many Muslims and people of color as possible.

Further, people involved in peacemaking or direct action find themselves under scrutiny in part because of their statuses as scholars and writers. Scholars who write critically about U.S. imperialism, capitalism, or military actions are more subject to visa revocations or denials. A recent example of this includes Badar Khan Suri, an Indian postdoctoral fellow whose visa was revoked under laws that allow deportations based on perceived foreign policy threats. And again, like DuBois and Mandel in the past, Suri’s scholarship and political views (a scholar of religion and peace!) placed him at odds with the U.S. government interests, leading to his own student visa complications. Another activist, a Tufts and Turkish National doctoral student named Rumeysa Ozturk urged her school to divest itself from corporate ties to Israel amidst a genocide and the result was her enforced disappearance.

New York Magazine just reported how Camila Muñoz, a Peruvian immigrant with a pending green card application, was detained despite her application being processed. She recently married an American Trump voter who regrettably still does not rethink his voting preference. Tourists and immigrants from Germany, Canada, and France as well have also experienced aggressive tactics at ports of entry. Yenseo Chung, a Columbia student not at all prominent in organized demonstrations, was targeted for merely participating in a protest at Barnard College. Although the strategy of the Trump Administration thus far has been to target elite schools thus divorcing them from the public good, support for the vulnerable remains vital and their interests should not be dismissed as mere reflections of “bourgeoise freedom and democracy.” (And as Ralph Milbrand warned against categorizing).

In short, Shirley DuBois’s fight against U.S. visa denial in 1970 was not only a personal battle but also a reflection of the broader tradition of Political Repression in Modern America. Whether through anti-imperialist activism, critiques of U.S. policies, or associations with controversial people and movements, individuals like DuBois and those facing visa issues in 2025 are trapped in a system that uses immigration controls to criminalize dissent to maintain what’s perceived as political stability.

In the ongoing struggle for maintaining freedom of expression, the stories of DuBois, Mandel, and modern-day activists, highlight the need for continued attention in defending the rights of marginalized individuals who will speak out against human rights abuses regardless of the political climate.

Daniel Falcone is a historian specializing in the revolutions of 1848 and the political refugees who sought asylum in New York City. His academic work focuses on Giuseppe Garibaldi’s influence on New York’s local history and the politics of memory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Aside from his research, he is a teacher and journalist whose work has appeared in additional publications such as The Journal of Contemporary Iraq & the Arab World, The Nation, Jacobin, and Truthout. His journalistic pieces intersect history with modern-day geopolitical issues.

“Behold the Land”

As we celebrated Juneteenth 2026, W.E.B. DuBois reminds us the path to freedom runs through the South

By W.E.B. DuBois

June 19, 2026

Source: The New Liberator

Selma Voting Rights March. Photo: SEIU, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

This year and every year, we are reminded that the great liberation of Black people on Juneteenth 1865 is a call towards more life, wider commitment, and deeper freedom. In the shadow of Callais and on the eve of the 250th anniversary of the United States, we must honor the best of what our ancestors have struggled, died, and lived for by struggling and fighting for the hearts and minds of millions.

In this moment we look to an address by W.E.B. DuBois at the Southern Negro Youth Congress in Columbia, South Carolina, October 1946, urging young people to regard the South as the battleground in the struggle for emancipation of working people, Black and white. He called on them to fight for “a new nation, a new economy, a new culture in a South really new.”

The future of American Negroes is in the South. Here three hundred and twenty-seven years ago, they began to enter what is now the United States of America; here they have made their greatest contribution to American culture; and here they have suffered the damnation of slavery, the frustration of reconstruction and the lynching of emancipation. I trust then that an organization like yours is going to regard the South as the battle-ground of a great crusade. Here is the magnificent climate; here is the fruitful earth under the beauty of the southern sun; and here, if anywhere on earth, is the need of the thinker, the worker and the dreamer. This is the firing line not simply for the emancipation of the American Negro but for the emancipation of the African Negro and the Negroes of the West Indies; for the emancipation of the colored races; and for the emancipation of the white slaves of modern capitalist monopoly.

Remember here, too, that you do not stand alone. It may seem like a failing fight when the newspapers ignore you; when every effort is made by white people in the South to count you out of citizenship and to act as though you did not exist as human beings while all the time they are profiting by your labor, gleaning wealth from your sacrifices and trying to build a nation and a civilization upon your degradation. You must remember that despite all this, you have allies—and allies even in the white South.

First and greatest of these possible allies are the white working classes about you, the poor whites whom you have been taught to despise and who in turn have learned to fear and hate you. This must not deter you from efforts to make them understand, because in the past in their ignorance and suffering they have been led foolishly to look upon you as the cause of most of their distress. You must remember that this attitude is hereditary from slavery and that it has been deliberately cultivated ever since emancipation.

Slowly but surely the working people of the South, white and Black, must come to remember that their emancipation depends upon their mutual cooperation; upon their acquaintanceship with each other; upon their friendship; upon their social intermingling. Unless this happens each is going to be made the football to break the heads and hearts of the other.

White youth in the South is peculiarly frustrated. There is not a single great ideal which they can express or aspire to, that does not bring them into flat contradiction with the Negro problem. The more they try to escape it, the more they land into hypocrisy, lying and double dealing; the more they become, what they least wish to become, the oppressors and despisers of human beings. Some of them, in larger and larger numbers, are bound to turn toward the truth and to recognize you as brothers and sisters, as fellow travelers toward the dawn.

There has always been in the South that intellectual elite who saw the Negro problem clearly. They have always lacked and some still lack the courage to stand up for what they know is right. Nevertheless they can be depended on in the long run to follow their own clear thinking and their own decent choice. Finally even the politicians must eventually recognize the trend in the world, in this country, and in the South. James Byrnes, that favorite son of this commonwealth, and Secretary of State of the United States, is today occupying an indefensible and impossible position; and if he survives in the memory of men, he must begin to help establish in his own South Carolina something of that democracy which he has been recently so loudly preaching to Russia. He is the end of a long series of men whose eternal damnation is the fact that they looked truth in the face and did not see it; John C. Calhoun, Wade Hampton, Ben Tillman are men whose names must ever be besmirched by the fact that they fought against freedom and democracy in a land which was founded upon democracy and freedom.

Eventually this class of men must yield to the writing in the stars. That great hypocrite, Jan Smuts, who today is talking of humanity and standing beside Byrnes for a United Nations, is at the same time oppressing the Black people of Africa to an extent which makes their two countries, South Africa and the American South, the most reactionary peoples on earth, peoples whose exploitation of the poor and helpless reaches the last degree of shame. They must in the long run yield to the forward march of civilization or die.

If now you young people, instead of running away from the battle here in Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, instead of seeking freedom and opportunity in Chicago and New York — which do spell opportunity — nevertheless grit your teeth and make up your minds to fight it out right here if it takes every day of your lives and the lives of your children’s children; if you do this, you must in meetings like this ask yourselves what does the fight mean? How can it be carried on? What are the best tools, arms, and methods? And where does it lead?

I should be the last to insist that the uplift of mankind never calls for force and death. There are times, as both you and I know, when

Tho’ love repine and reason chafe,
There came a voice without reply,
‘Tis man’s perdition to be safe
When for truth he ought to die.

At the same time and even more clearly in a day like this, after the millions of mass murders that have been done in the world since 1914, we ought to be the last to believe that force is ever the final word. We cannot escape the clear fact that what is going to win in this world is reason if this ever becomes a reasonable world. The careful reasoning of the human mind backed by the facts of science is the one salvation of man. The world, if it resumes its march toward civilization, cannot ignore reason. This has been the tragedy of the South in the past; it is still its awful and unforgivable sin that it has set its face against reason and against the fact. It tried to build slavery upon freedom; it tried to build tyranny upon democracy; it tried to build mob violence on law and law on lynching, and in all that despicable endeavor, the state of South Carolina has led the South for a century. It began not the Civil War — not the War between the States — but the War to Preserve Slavery; it began mob violence and lynching and today it stands in the front rank of those defying the Supreme Court on disfranchisement.

Nevertheless reason can and will prevail; but of course it can only prevail with publicity — pitiless, blatant publicity. You have got to make the people of the United States and of the world know what is going on in the South. You have got to use every field of publicity to force the truth into their ears, and before their eyes. You have got to make it impossible for any human being to live in the South and not realize the barbarities that prevail here. You may be condemned for flamboyant methods; for calling a congress like this; for waving your grievances under the noses and in the faces of men.

That makes no difference; it is your duty to do it. It is your duty to do more of this sort of thing than you have done in the past. As a result of this you are going to be called upon for sacrifice. It is no easy thing for a young Black man or a young Black woman to live in the South today and to plan to continue to live here; to marry and raise children; to establish a home. They are in the midst of legal caste and customary insults; they are in continuous danger of mob violence; they are mistreated by the officers of the law and they have no hearing before the courts and the churches and public opinion commensurate with the attention which they ought to receive. But that sacrifice is only the beginning of battle; you must re-build this South.

W.E.B. DuBois, ca. 1907.

There are enormous opportunities here for a new nation, a new economy, a new culture in a South really new and not a mere renewal of an old South of slavery, monopoly and race hate. There is a chance for a new cooperative agriculture on renewed land owned by the state with capital furnished by the state, mechanized and coordinated with city life. There is chance for strong, virile trade unions without race discrimination, with high wage, closed shop and decent conditions of work, to beat back and hold in check the swarm of landlords, monopolists and profiteers who are today sucking the blood out of this land. There is chance for cooperative industry, built on the cheap power of T.V.A. [Tennessee Valley Authority] and its future extensions. There is opportunity to organize and mechanize domestic service with decent hours, and high wage and dignified training.

There is a vast field for consumers’ cooperation, building business on public service and not on private profit as the main-spring of industry. There is chance for a broad, sunny, healthy home life, shorn of the fear of mobs and liquor, and rescued from lying, stealing politicians, who build their deviltry on race prejudice.

Here in this South is the gateway to the colored millions of the West Indies, Central and South America. Here is the straight path to Africa, the Indies, China and the South Seas. Here is the path to the greater, freer, truer world. It would be shame and cowardice to surrender this glorious land and its opportunities for civilization and humanity to the thugs and lynchers, the mobs and profiteers, the monopolists and gamblers who today choke its soul and steal its resources. The oil and sulfur; the coal and iron; the cotton and corn; the lumber and cattle belong to you the workers, Black and white, and not to the thieves who hold them and use them to enslave you. They can be rescued and restored to the people if you have the guts to strive for the real right to vote, the right to real education, the right of happiness and health and the total abolition of the father of these scourges of mankind, poverty.

“Behold the beautiful land which the Lord thy God hath given thee.” Behold the land, the rich and resourceful land, from which for a hundred years its best elements have been running away, its youth and hope, Black and white, scurrying North because they are afraid of each other, and dare not face a future of equal, independent, upstanding human beings, in a real and not a sham democracy.

To rescue this land, in this way, calls for the Great Sacrifice; this is the thing that you are called upon to do because it is the right thing to do. Because you are embarked upon a great and holy crusade, the emancipation of mankind, Black and white; the upbuilding of democracy; the breaking down, particularly here in the South, of forces of evil represented by race prejudice in South Carolina; by lynching in Georgia; by disfranchisement in Mississippi; by ignorance in Louisiana and by all these and monopoly of wealth in the whole South.

There could be no more splendid vocation beckoning to the youth of the twentieth century, after the flat failures of white civilization, after the flamboyant establishment of an industrial system which creates poverty and the children of poverty which are ignorance and disease and crime; after the crazy boasting of a white culture that finally ended in wars which ruined civilization in the whole world; in the midst of allied peoples who have yelled about democracy and never practiced it either in the British Empire or in the American Commonwealth or in South Carolina. Here is the chance for young women and young men of devotion to lift again the banner of humanity and to walk toward a civilization which will be free and intelligent; which will be healthy and unafraid; and build in the world a culture led by Black folk and joined by peoples of all colors and all races — without poverty, ignorance and disease!

---

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868–1963) was a foundational sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and author who shaped the trajectory of Black liberation and civil rights in twentieth-century America. As the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Du Bois rejected accommodationist policies, co-founded the NAACP, pioneered empirical sociology, and championed global Pan-Africanism.

---

This article was originally published by The New Liberator; please consider supporting the original publication, and read the original version at the link above.Email

W.E.B. DuBois

William Edward Burghardt (W.E.B.) Du Bois (1868–1963) was a foundational sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and author who shaped the trajectory of Black liberation and civil rights in twentieth-century America. As the first African American to earn a Ph.D. from Harvard University, Du Bois rejected accommodationist policies, co-founded the NAACP, pioneered empirical sociology, and championed global Pan-Africanism.