Stolen Chances: Three Takeaways from W. E. B. Du Bois's Writings on Crime, and Why They Matter

This paper argues that W. E. B. Du Bois was far ahead of his time in understanding the deep connection between racial oppression and crime, and that his insights remain crucially important today. Three of those insights, or takeaways, are especially important: that racial oppression has consequences; that those consequences—though profound—are reversible through concerted social action; and that our failure to sustain and build on the successes of the Reconstruction era and beyond in addressing the roots of violence is the most fundamental cause of the persistence of endemic crime in Black communities. I trace Du Bois's views through three of his most compelling works— The Philadelphia Negro, The Souls of Black Folk, and Black Reconstruction in America —and highlight their special importance in an age in which, yet again, hard-won steps toward racial equality are being steadily and systematically rolled back through regressive social policy.