W. E. B. Du Bois, Community-Based Research, and the Black Radical Tradition

• In Event: 66.064 - Youth and Community Voice? Perspectives on Challenging a Racial Politics of Inclusion

Abstract

Originally published in 1899, W.E.B. Du Bois’s The Philadelphia Negro was a study of the conditions of over forty thousand Black residents living in The Seventh Ward of Philadelphia at the end of the nineteenth century. Du Bois demonstrated that the condition of the Black community was “a symptom, not a cause…a long historic development and not a transient occurrence” (DuBois 2017) of institutionalized racism. Challenging popular eugenic theories of the time, Du Bois explained that the social conditions of the Philadelphia Black community, such as high poverty rates and spatial segregation, were due not to particular traits of this racialilized group, but produced by historical, cultural, and structural circumstances. In this paper, I present Du Bois, specifically The Philadelphia Negro, as a pioneering methodological model for community based research and argue that it offers insights to grapple with the potentials and limitations of community based research today.
At its most basic, community based research is a collaborative process between a community and researcher(s). By involving members of the community at multiple levels, and incorporating and validating multiple sources of knowledge, scholars have argued that a central goal of this method is to understand and support the specific community’s needs and foster social change accordingly (Merenstein 2015; Bach and Weinzimmer 2011). Du Bois’s innovative methods in American sociology’s first large-scale empirical study—a fifteen-month project that included demographic, statistical, historical, and qualitative approaches— offers insights into the methodological practices that facilitate community based research and the institutional conditions that may prevent it. To demonstrates this, the paper is structured in two sections. In the first section, I excavate how Du Bois centered his scholarship as political and rooted in changing the conditions of The Seventh Ward. In addition, I highlight the multiple methodological and representational approaches Du Bois used to disseminate his findings beyond academic writing. I close this section with a discussion of the relevancy of The Philadelphia Negro in conducting community based research today. Drawing from the work of Cedric Robinson (1983), in the second section I situate W.E.B. Du Bois as part of a larger tradition of scholars at the margins who have conducted community based research, or at the very least, the production of research for the purpose of promoting social justice and facilitation of social change.
The Philadelphia Negro, and the work of Du Bois more broadly, provide inspiration to carry out community-based and community engaged research. As Du Bois demonstrates in The Philadelphia Negro, community based research brings to the forefront the struggles of the people for whom we write with and for to challenge inequality. Following this tradition provides an opportunity to give depth to our scholarship and set forth future directions for community based research. The Philadelphia Negro offers more than just theoretical insight; it offers opportunities to reflect and learn from Du Bois’s commitment to social justice, the tensions doing justice-oriented work from within the academy produces, and the value of multi-method approaches.

Author

• Uriel Serrano, University of California - Santa Cruz