A Homeless Mind

W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919—1963, by David Levering Lewis (Holt, 715 pp., $35)

WE. B. DU BOIS, the noted black scholar and propagandist, is evoked frequently today, if not always with great understanding. He is the bête noire of conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, who see his fixation on civil rights and protest as leading ultimately to theatrical militancy, deflecting blacks from the more practical path to self-sufficiency through hard work, thrift, and morality preached by Booker T. Washington. Yet I wonder if Du Bois would be so disliked by the Right if his meritocratic ideals, his high regard for standards, and his preaching against black “pathological” behavior were better known.

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Gerald Early

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W. E. B. Du Bois: The Fight for Equality and the American Century, 1919—1963, by David Levering Lewis (Holt, 715 pp., $35)

WE. B. DU BOIS, the noted black scholar and propagandist, is evoked frequently today, if not always with great understanding. He is the bête noire of conservatives like Dinesh D’Souza, who see his fixation on civil rights and protest as leading ultimately to theatrical militancy, deflecting blacks from the more practical path to self-sufficiency through hard work, thrift, and morality preached by Booker T. Washington. Yet I wonder if Du Bois would be so disliked by the Right if his meritocratic ideals, his high regard for standards, and his preaching against black “pathological” behavior were better known.