It’s for the kids: The sociological significance of W.E.B. Dubois’s Brownie Books and its philosophical relevance for our understanding of gender in the ethnological age

For better or for worse, W.E.B. Du Boisis an iconic figure who has symbolized the limit of the Black philosophical tradition for the last three decades. As a towering intellectual figurehead, his work, primarily the philosophically significant The Souls of Black Folk and “The Conservation of Races,” has been the focus of countless published articles and chapters ranging from ideological caricature to sincere intellectual concernment. However, the creative license allowed with his texts,where authors aim to squeeze the last drop of Du Bois’ semblance with already established canonical figures like John Dewey or G.W.F. Hegel and with established traditions like American pragmatism, existential-ism, or cosmopolitanism, has encouraged scholars to wrongly assert that the political ends of our day also form the intellectual basis of DuBois’ project