THE BLACK THINKER:

I can only assume, without directional preface, that this piece is a serious essay, offered for comment;

on that basis i will make the, perhaps trivial seeming, comment that it's direction could be greatly enhanced, and made much easier (i gave up) to consume by the proper, and judicious, use of the comma!
[i add as an example, the last paragraph edited.]


The statements above offer many explanations for the marginality of the Blacks within our society, as they live within a White world. So, DuBois' exclusion from the high echelons of sociological scholarship is not accident, but is as a result of his blackness, and is the purpose of his works. He sought to challenge the White establishment by his life’s works. Who was DuBois to challenge an ordered status quo? As such, DuBois’ empirical works, were significant, and the first of their kind in the sociology of America; although the Whites, being the controllers of the financial resources, were able to easily sideline the black scientist. Therefore, Dr W. E. B. (William Edward Burghart) DuBois let peace wherein though lie be your comfort. For the Africans for which you fought, encouraged, and sought to elevate by scholarly efforts, do recognize, and have accepted, each thought that you sought to impart to us. In the new world, brother Dr DuBois, we recognize your epistemological construct, and scholarship left behind, as materialist pillars, upon which we shall endeavour to build and encourage other blacks to read hereafter.

[hoping that i have not altered the content, and intent.]

Bo, Are you saying that you read that entire thing?

No, as i mention, i gave up;
one of the most common problems with writing, is that when you read your own work, with the intent of editing, you see only what you 'know' is there, not what is actually on the page.

[Editing is an art, requiring many duplicitous techniques, to be successful!]

it seems like a school essay to me. has it been graded yet? while i'm ok with giving feedback, i'm a little uneasy when it comes to assignments. in any case, it'd be good to know what the paper is for.

Re: THE BLACK THINKER:
I'll bet this is a class paper also. If it is just a review paper it is not bad, but dull,dull dull.




Two points.

You can bet your bunny slippers that Boas had read Du Bois, but he did not need DuBois to reach those conclusions. Boas (an anthropologist) came out of a positivist and empirical tradition (his Phd was in physics). He also had more than his share of experience with racism as a jew.


Marxism: this was a dead end that Du Bois fell into and Boas avoided, basically by rejecting all theory and demanding that all generalizations be constructed from observational data. Marxism and to a degree Durkheim works the reverse, and explain their data from their theory.

Du Bois made major contributions but his dependency on theory (as was the case with the majority of social sciences of his era) limited him in that the theories set boundaries on his thinking. Boas on the other hand was over whelmed with the data produced by his empirical/observational approach. But he built a solid foundation for advances by the next generation of scholars.