The early 20th-century American intellectual, sociologist, and civil rights activist W.E.B. Du Bois wrote prolifically about the meaning of race and the democratic ideal.
He also thought deeply about the roots of racism: whether it had its origins in ignorance or in character. By the time Du Bois wrote "Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil" - a volume of essays, autofiction, and poetry published in 1920, less than two years after the end of World War I - he had become convinced that it was the latter and connected to broader cultural forces that degraded democracy.
"Darkwater" and its arguments form the crux of Robert Gooding-Williams' new book, "Democracy and Beauty: The Political Aesthetics of W.E.B. Du Bois" (Columbia University Press) - particularly Du Bois' ideas about the capacity for beauty to push back against racism and the hopelessness it can engender.
For Du Bois, Gooding-Williams writes, "[b]eauty has a role to play in opposing white supremacy and fostering a more inclusive democracy, first, because it can strengthen our determination to fight it, the obduracy of the white supremacist notwithstanding; and second, because it can unsettle and help to transform the pernicious habits that perpetuate it."
