W. E. B. Du Bois and Black People's Blocked March Toward Equality

W. E. B. Du Bois, a man of extraordinary gifts, in 1897–1898 completed a survey of the lives of 9675 Black Philadelphians. Black inequality and crime were, he observed, products of interactions among legacies of historic racism, contemporaneous discrimination, and conditions of deep structural disadvantage. Criminologists have long documented the criminogenic effects of structural disadvantage, concluding that they are race-neutral, affecting people of all “races” in much the same way, but have only recently, like Du Bois, acknowledged that the background conditions of Black people's lives are not race-neutral. The policy implications are straightforward: Aggressively challenge invidious bias, identify and remove blocked opportunities, ameliorate deep structural disadvantage. That hasn’t happened, partly because majorities of White people are nearly as unsympathetic to Black disadvantage and suffering as were their predecessors in earlier times. Rationalizations have changed, from the ostensibly primitive character and violence of African culture, to beliefs in Black racial inferiority, to hypothesized defects in Black culture, to provocation of White resentment and enmity, but the underlying pattern has continued. Much more than in other wealthy countries, fatalism about and indifference to human suffering are fundamental characteristics of American political and popular culture. They harm countless people, but especially Black people.