W.E.B. DuBois
We’ve got news.
There is no Talented Tenth. Or at least, not in the way it is popularly imagined.
We know that this comes as a surprise to the many African Americans who believe that the primary purpose for becoming educated is to lord it over others under the guise of “giving back.” But contrary to popular Black belief, the idea that there’s a small percentage of Black folks who are Better Than Thou and whose responsibility it is to Uplift the Rest of You Niggas is a fallacious one.
It might behoove those of us who casually toss around this term in reference to our education, accomplishments and literal talents (i.e. “I’m graduating from Columbia next year; I’m in that Talented Tenth, son.” or “Our fraternity’s been giving back to the community for years. We’re Talented Tenthers.”) to take a second gander at its origin.
We dig W.E.B. DuBois as much as the next guy, but it’s pretty obvious he was coming out of a seriously elitist* bag when he dreamed up this, the first sentences of his 1903 treatise:
The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.
It appears that the Love Black People/Hate Niggas Movement dates back to the turn of the 20th century. It doesn’t just predate Chris Rock’s Bring the Pain by a few years. It predates penicillin. And if you think we’re being overly sensitive, check this out:
From the very first it has been the educated and intelligent of the Negro people that have led and elevated the mass, and the sole obstacles that nullified and retarded their efforts were slavery and race prejudice; for what is slavery but the legalized survival of the unfit and the nullification of the work of natural internal leadership? Negro leadership therefore sought from the first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for natural selection and the survival of the fittest.
That’s right, folks. W.E.B. DuBois believed that slavery disrupted the course of natural selection—and that by feeding and clothing his niggers, Massa was enabling the “awful incubus” also known as the “Worst of the Race,” to survive long after they should’ve been devoured by nature’s weeding out process for those unfit to go on living—you know, those people who have a hard time pulling themselves up by their own bootstraps, those folks sucking up all the natural resources (and salaries) that should be on hand for people who finish their college studies.
Not that DuBois felt that every Black person who skipped the college experience should be counted among the awful incubus:
All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold.
It’s just that, if you don’t go to college, you’re to be pitied, because obviously you’re too thick not to be “mystified by the hard and necessary toil” of holdin’ down a job! Oh, and you also have no ambition beyond eating.
You can read the text in its entirety via the embedded link above, and you’re sure to find valid sentiments couched beside a bunch of classist, self-disdaining hooey. Perhaps you’re one of those eat the meat and throw away the bones folks who have no problem skimming over the copious parts of DuBois’ essay that refer to Black people as a “race of ex-slaves,” who all invariably need their characters strengthened by “higher,” post-high school education. If so, that’s fine. To each his own. For those folks, the use of the term “talented tenth,” may roll guiltless off the tongue.
But for others, for whom the term has simply become an approximation of esteem-building within the Black community or for those who’ve heard it on the lips of their parents and grandparents, but never really gave much thought to its origin or realized how insulting it could potentially be to a wide swath of the African American community, maybe you’d like to reconsider just tossing it around all willy-nilly.
See, the fact is: there is no superior faction of the race whose life’s duty is to uplift the rest of us dim, ill-witted, non-college-educated, character-less, dark-skinned people.
That’s a myth. And it’s a myth that has its roots in an elitism that even Obama’s toughest critics would find dizzying.
