,
17 tweets,
2 min read
Read on Twitter
1/x In 1934, W.E.B. Du Bois published what to this day remains the most sophisticated sociological study of Reconstruction.
2/x He called the book Black Reconstruction and opens it with a prologue “To the Reader,” which is a single page of just four paragraphs.
3/x The first two paragraphs explain that the book will attempt to tell the story of Reconstruction through the experience of Black people.
4/x The third paragraph is a note of thanks to his school and various funds that supported research for the book.
5/x In the fourth and last paragraph, he addresses the reader directly and says that which if it were a tweet would be called evergreen
6/x To begin with, that last paragraph is flat out beautifully written in plain language with none of the usual flourishes of the time.
7/x But the paragraph is also remarkably prescient in the way it describes the two lenses through which “race” conversations is filtered.
8/x At bottom Du Bois explains that the way you read (hear) any story about black people depends on whether you believe
9/x Black people are basically ordinary human beings, or you believe they are, for whatever reason, “something less than.”
10/x Thinking about that paragraph, it is interesting to read modern newspapers/magazines or twitter for that matter, or listen to newscasts
11/x and try to critically examine how much of modern race discourse still vacillates between these two lenses:
12/x public education, crime statistics, housing segregation, even art and culture.
13/x Anyway, here is the paragraph in its entirety. (It has always been one of my favorite openings of a book.) 
14/x But here is why I’ve always found the book fascinating. On page 13 he says that the question about slavery and indeed about the fate
15/x of Black people in the end is not really about black people. Instead it is about the meaning and fate of democracy.
16/xHere we are, after all this time, and we are back to the same question. If 2016 proved anything it is, as Du bois argued, that
17/17 the question of race is always in the end about the fate of our democracy.
