What Might Du Bois Say About Critical Race Theory in K–12 Education, the Closure and Takeover of Black Schools, Social Justice Education, and the Resegregation of Schools Today?

• In Event: W. E. B. Du Bois in Our Times: Toward Racial Justice in Education in the 21st Century

Abstract

As one of the foremost thinkers about race and its shaping of American education and social life for African Americans, Du Bois is often credited with being an early progenitor of Critical Race Theory (Shuford, 2001). Despite famously concluding that “Negro” students did not require separate and special schools (1935), Du Bois was clear about what types of schools, curricula, and teaching, Negro children deserved. His perspectives on race and class evolved and began to reflect his new thinking on U.S. racism and what we would now describe as anti-Blackness. Du Bois’ understanding of the need to reach across geographical boundaries, and work more intentionally on building coalitions within the race that were often divided along class lines, are as prescient and insightful today as they were 100 years ago. His ex-patriation is often mischaracterized as a deliberate choice to leave the U.S., but it’s quite the contrary: Du Bois was refused re-entry into the U.S. after going on a trip to the African continent to build coalitions with burgeoning independent African nation-states. Again, his life, thinking, and emerging transnational organizing offer a model for how we might think about his reaction to the destruction of Black public education.

Author

• Adrienne D. Dixson, Pennsylvania State University