What Is W. E. B. Dubois A Sociological Problem

American Baptist College

Sociological Problems: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and W.E.B. DuBois
Abstract
When it comes to sociological problems, it is understood that there are a number of issues that concern our community that deal with a wide range of concerns and dilemmas regarding the African-American population. Most of the sociological problems that have extended their presence into our present day society can be traced back to the beginning of institutionalized slavery in the United States. In particular, for Negros, it was a society shaped by racism, the fight for equality, and education. However, Dr. Martin Luther King and W.E.B. Dubois expounded on these issues during the time of their revolutionary movements.
I was born
in the year of 1959. As a child growing up in Nashville during the early sixties, I can remember hearing talk about this man named Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Civil Rights Movement. Because I was so young, I really did not know exactly what this movement meant, what he represented, or his ultimate mission. Given these facts, as time went on, I developed an awareness of what was taking place in our social environment. In addition to these factors, I was able to see why there was so much violence and hatred going on in our cities around the country concerning the matters of civil rights and freedom.
“Nearly 100 years after the Emancipation Proclamation, African Americans in Southern states still inhabited a starkly unequal world of disenfranchisement, segregation and various forms of oppression, including race-inspired violence” ().
There has been much time that has passed since slaves were brought into this country. These people were brought over on ships and transported in conditions than were less than humane. The torture and pain endured was unimaginable. Although many years have passed since the Middle Passage, the plight of the negro is still futile and our people are suffering at the hands of systems that are plagued with inequality as well as inferior systems that prevent our people from progression. Negroes have had a significant measure of difficulty in breaking free from the slave mentality and are casualties of a society made to view them as a commodity rather than a citizen. W.E.B. Dubois stated, “The wage of the negro worker despite the war amendments was to be reduced to the level of bare subsistence by taxation, peonage, cast, and every method of discrimination” (Berghardt,
1935).
Dr.
King spoke about hoe negroes, as American citizens, were tired of being oppressed and denied equal rights. Negros were neglected, overlooked and disregarded in society never having access to the same measure of rights as their white counterparts. King stated, “In this other America millions of worked starved men walked the streets daily in search for jobs that do not exist. In this other America millions of people find themselves living in rat-infested, vermin filled slums. In this other America, people are poor by the millions.” The negro people found themselves in a place of severe poverty while white people were experiencing the advantages of economic prosperity. The “other America” presented no hope to anyone classified as a minority. They find themselves perishing on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity and that many people of various backgrounds live in this “other America” including Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Indians and Appalachian whites. But probably the largest group in this other America in proportion to its size in the population is the American Negro." (The Other America,
1967)
On the other hand, Dubois acknowledges Carl Schurz. He states, “Planters held back their former slaves on their plantations by brute force. Armed bands of white men patrolled the county roads to drive the Negros wandering about” (Berghardt, 1935). However, social structure and social interaction during these times determined the order of the day. The sociological torture was too much to bear and caused a traumatizing effect which extended into the generations. C. Wright Mills explains that sociological imagination is to “think ourselves away, and the ability to break ourselves free from particular circumstances and see our social world in a new, broader light.” (Giddens, 2003). In the plight of the 21st-century black, we as African-Americans living here in the United States of America, deserve to be treated equally. We deserve, as any other person, to access every with equal opportunity that may be available. For many years, we have been deprived of our own dignity, self-worth and freedom. Furthermore, I feel that Negros dealt with a sense of self-consciousness as George Herbert Meade explains social self as “individuals see themselves as others see them” (Giddens, 2003). With the assumption when it came to the Negro it meant, Low, dirty, and without purpose. In addition, Dubois speaks on the lawlessness in the south and how “blacks and white men during that time were fighting for the same jobs. However, the whites joined the white landholders and obviously knocked blacks out of a job which started a new doctrine of race hatred” (Berghardt, 1935).
Moreover, moving back toward slavery has never stopped. Early on after freedom had been declared, there were political people in power of the south who detested such an achievement and developed Mass Incarceration. Dubois explains, The Chain- Gang is also part of the 21st Century Black. In fact, when it comes to mass incarceration, Michelle Alexander author of (The New Jim Crow) speaks on this Chain- gang type mentality in the 21 century. She states, “Mass incarceration is a massive system of racial and social control. It is the process by which people are swept into the criminal justice system, branded criminals and felons, locked up for longer periods of time than most other countries.”
To conclude, there are many issues that plague our society today. These issues are complicated and complex reflecting the true perspectives the issue of racism, injustice, poverty, still exists in the 21 century Black. We must, as African Americans, educate ourselves by expanding our knowledge and positioning ourselves to be critical thinkers. We must communication and address in a straightforward manner the global understandings of sociological problems in society.