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Dusk of Dawn: An Essay Toward an Autobiography of a Race Concept

by W.E.B. Du Bois

4.09 of 5 stars 4.09 · rating details · 58 ratings · 4 reviews

Hardcover , 183 pages

Published by Oxford University Press (first published January 1st 1975)

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May 17, 2013 kripsoo rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Some reviewers refer to DuBois as "the Black Emerson" and as a university instructor I heard similar references made 'the Black Dewey" or the Black Park referring to the Chicago School scholars Du Bois was brilliant indeed, these white men should be being called "the white Du Bois" Du Bois literally created the scientific method of observation and qualitative research. With the junk being put out today in the name of "dissertations," simply re-read Du Bois' work on the Suppression of the African ...more

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Jun 29, 2014 Andre rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This inquiry about the African Diaspora is a testament of Dubois’s exceptional scientific acuity and his powerful imagination. DuBois writes for us ‘an autobiography of a race.’ This general idea alone validates the book as a highly creative concept. Anyone with experience in writing can imagine this project being a daunting task. It is a great contribution to understanding the matters of racial exploitation. By the same token, the only thing I can mull over is the sheer amount of knowledge miss This inquiry about the African Diaspora is a testament of Dubois’s exceptional scientific acuity and his powerful imagination. DuBois writes for us ‘an autobiography of a race.’ This general idea alone validates the book as a highly creative concept. Anyone with experience in writing can imagine this project being a daunting task. It is a great contribution to understanding the matters of racial exploitation. By the same token, the only thing I can mull over is the sheer amount of knowledge missing in the world about the African Diaspora. This book offers colorful depictions about my heritage, but it also makes me feel the void of all that is lost for the cause of western expansion. You envision a multitude of people devoid of their cultural identity. Whole-hearted liberties are bounded up due to a culture’s narrow economic focus. With renewed feeling, the reader abhors the cost it took to build in the US what seems like a gaudy monstrosity.
I’m not sure whether to see DuBois as an artistic intellectual or an intellectual artist. The ebb and flow in his descriptions of African beauty and a racial identity pours over your mind in the most cooling way. His words unearth treasures that have long been buried under the sands of hatred, exploitation and oppression. DuBois words are eternal. The words are gems that humanity will always have access to when perceiving life as a romance. The spirit of the book is summarized in the following words. "What was wrong was that I and people like many thousands of others who might have my ability and aspiration, were refused permission to be a part of this world. It was as though moving on a rushing express, my main thought was as to the relations I had to the other passengers on the express, and not to its rate of speed and its destination. In the day of my formal education, my interest was concentered upon the race struggle. The fight on the moving car had to do with my relations to the car and its folk; but on the whole, nothing to do with the car's own movement."
The Colored World Within
The root of the whole book is planted in the chapter “The Colored World Within.” In this chapter, DuBois speaks of the "double environment" that encompasses the black American experience. There is this white surrounding world and this closer all-encompassing black world that is formed. DuBois acknowledges that the outer white world is more intelligent, richer, and has better legal and governmental systems to sustain its community. Furthermore, he points out that the black American is not naturally stupid or criminal or unhealthy or impoverished. There are systemic restraints that place people against the odds. Again, in his words, “…the fact remains that there are among 12 million American Negroes, there are today poverty, ignorance, bad manners, disease, and crime………..Above all the Negro is poor: poor by heritage from two-hundred forty-four years of chattel slavery, by emancipation without land or capital and by seventy five years of additional wage exploitation and crime peonage.” These words destroy the lurking ignorance that strikes at the minds of millions of Americans in today’s media-sphere.

The most significant part of this chapter is DuBois accurate depiction of the structure of the Black American class. He likens it to a steeple with a strong base with a pointed top. The pointed top represents the small number of black people in the higher classes. He stays on track and depicts the white class structure as a tower that bulges in the middle before thinning at the top- this top, however, being much larger in circumference than the pointed steeple of the black American class. These are shapes that are still present in today’s sketch. Dusk of Dawn dispels myths that have been used as techniques to create confusion. Modern man questions why the African-American race has not come out of its obscurity. The author answers back with a scientific breakdown, which is today’s most acceptable methodology. He appraises the police tyranny in the black community, not to mention the poor housing, the insufficient hospitalization, the underfunded education system, the weak legal system, the high unemployment rate, and the meager earnings per household in order to silence the condescending voices. He takes into account society’s obsession with the ‘exceptions’ as means to justify a theory of non-existing racial barriers. He reminds people that it takes a lot more to sweep a whole race of people out of their unfavorable conditions. Another topic in ‘The Colored World Within’ is the isolation of the educated and higher wage- earning Negro. DuBois states that this particular individual is wedged between a race oppressing economic machine and an ‘ignorant, anti-social low cultural black American class’. The reader has to be cognizant of DuBois impartial observations. His descriptions can come off as too blunt. However, there is a duality between his cold hypothesis and poetic imagery that coexist throughout the whole book.

One last word
Altogether, this book is a treasure that is meant to last forever. I believe these scientific accounts on the race problem in America will be studied in a future post modern world. DuBois is a giant in our very young trial in understanding American society. He makes known that there are undeniable certainties that scream for settlement. These pressing needs have erupted here and there in the last 150 years. Bear in mind that this volcano will deface the American fantasy if we continue to ignore these issues.
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Jun 25, 2011 Sara-Maria Sorentino rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

‘But why have you black and yellow men done nothing better or even as good in the history of the world?’
We have, often.
“I never heard of it.”
Lions have no historians.
“It is idiotic even to discuss it. Look around and see the pageantry of the world. It belongs to white men; it is the expression of white power; it is the product of white brains. Who can have the effrontery to stand for a moment and compare with this white triumph, yellow and brown anarchy and black savagery?”
You are obsessed by ‘But why have you black and yellow men done nothing better or even as good in the history of the world?’
We have, often.
“I never heard of it.”
Lions have no historians.
“It is idiotic even to discuss it. Look around and see the pageantry of the world. It belongs to white men; it is the expression of white power; it is the product of white brains. Who can have the effrontery to stand for a moment and compare with this white triumph, yellow and brown anarchy and black savagery?”
You are obsessed by the swiftness of the gliding of the sled at the bottom of the hill. You say: what tremendous power must have caused its speed, and how wonderful is Speed. You think of the rider as the originator and inventor of that vast power. You admire his poise and sang-froid, his utter self-absorption. You say: surely here is the son of God and he shall reign forever and forever.
You are wrong, quite wrong. Away back on the level stretches of the mountain tops in the forests, amid drifts and driftwood, this sled was slowly and painfully pushed on its little hesitating start. It took power, but the power of sweating, courageous men, not of demigods. As the sled slowly started and gained momentum, it was the Law of Being that gave it speed, and the grace of God that steered its lone, scared passengers. Those passengers, white, black, red and yellow, deserve credit for their balance and pluck. But many times it was sheer luck that made the road not land the white man in the gutter, as it had others so many times before, and as it may him yet. He has gone farther than others because of others whose very falling made hard ways iced and smooth for him to traverse. His triumph is a triumph not of himself alone, but of humankind, from the pusher in the primeval forests to the last flier through the winds of the twentieth century.” (149-150)

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Nov 07, 2010 Erin rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: non-fiction , autobiographical

Can my friends tell that I am taking a class on W.E.B. Du Bois this semester? It seems that he is all that I read. This is written in an autobiogrpahy style. He applies his life to the rest of the African-American population.

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About W.E.B. Du Bois

In 1868, W.E.B. Du Bois (né William Edward Burghardt Du Bois) was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made hi In 1868, W.E.B. Du Bois (né William Edward Burghardt Du Bois) was born in Massachusetts. He attended Fisk College in Nashville, then earned his BA in 1890 and his MS in 1891 from Harvard. Du Bois studied at the University of Berlin, then earned his doctorate in history from Harvard in 1894. He taught economics and history at Atlanta University from 1897-1910. The Souls of Black Folk (1903) made his name, in which he urged black Americans to stand up for their educational and economic rights. Du Bois was a founder of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, and edited the NAACP's official journal, "Crisis," from 1910 to 1934. Du Bois turned "Crisis" into the foremost black literary journal. The black nationalist expanded his interests to global concerns, and is called the "father of Pan-Africanism" for organizing international black congresses.

Although he used some religious metaphor and expressions in some of his books and writings, Du Bois called himself a freethinker. In "On Christianity," a posthumously published essay, Du Bois critiqued the black church: " The theology of the average colored church is basing itself far too much upon 'Hell and Damnation'—upon an attempt to scare people into being decent and threatening them with the terrors of death and punishment. We are still trained to believe a good deal that is simply childish in theology. The outward and visible punishment of every wrong deed that men do, the repeated declaration that anything can be gotten by anyone at any time by prayer ." Du Bois became a member of the Communist Party and officially repudiated his U.S. citizenship at the end of his life, dying in his adopted country of Ghana. D. 1963.

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