Problematizing the “Negro Problem”: A Reflection on W. E. B. Du Bois’s Social Philosophy

Abstract This article explores W. E. B. Du Bois’s social philosophy as encapsulated in his seminal work, The Philadelphia Negro, the first comprehensive triangulated sociological research in the United States in which quantitative, qualitative, and archival data were used to arrive at conclusions. Du Bois asserts that while historians clarify facts, philosophers interpret them for social reform guidance. Central to Du Bois’s commitment to truth and social reforms is the humanity of all humans. He conceptualizes the Negro Problem as a human problem emanating from exclusion and lack of human-to-human recognition. But unlike Du Bois and other scholars of the “Negro Problem” such as Washington, Myrdal, and Bailey, this article attempts a differentiation between “the Negro problem,” psychosocial recognition, and “Negro problems,” the manifest social problems, and posits that what is often termed the Negro problem is not a Negro problem. This differentiation and panaceas are the contributions the author makes and submits for further debate.