The Future of the Race is a 1996 book by prominent African-American scholars Henry Louis Gates and Cornel West. It is both commentary and criticism on W. E. B. Du Bois' essay "The Talented Tenth" . The Vintage Books edition includes the original text by Du Bois. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Future_of_the_Race Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (born September 16, 1950) is the Alphonse Fletcher University Professor and Director of the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University. He is also an Emmy Award-winning filmmaker, literary scholar, journalist, cultural critic, and institution builder. Gates has written 17 books and created 14 documentary films, including Wonders of the African World, African American Lives, Black in Latin America, and Finding Your Roots, now in its second season on PBS. His six-part PBS documentary series, The African Americans: Many Rivers to Cross (2013), which he wrote, executive produced, and hosted, earned the News and Documentary Emmy Award for Outstanding Historical Program—Long Form, as well as the Peabody Award, Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award, and NAACP Image Award. Having written for such leading publications as The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Time, Gates is editor-in-chief of TheRoot.com, a daily online magazine, while overseeing the Oxford African American Studies Center, the first comprehensive scholarly online resource in the field. In 2012, The Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Reader, a collection on his writings, was published. Gates's latest book is Finding Your Roots: The Official Companion to the PBS Series, released by the University of North Carolina Press in 2014. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Louis_Gates,_Jr. Cornel Ronald West (born June 2, 1953) is an American philosopher, academic, activist, author, public intellectual, and prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America. The son of a Baptist minister, West received his undergraduate education at Harvard University, graduating with a bachelor's degree in 1973, and received a Ph.D at Princeton University in 1980, becoming the first African American to graduate from Princeton with a Ph.D in philosophy.[1] He taught at Harvard in 2001 before leaving the school after a highly publicized dispute with then-president Lawrence Summers. He was The Class of 1943 Professor of African American Studies at Princeton[2][3] before leaving the school in 2011 to become Professor of Philosophy and Christian Practice at the Union Theological Seminary[4] in New York City. He has also spent time teaching at the University of Paris. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornel_West The phrase "talented tenth" originated in 1896 among Northern white liberals, specifically the American Baptist Home Mission Society, a Christian missionary society strongly supported by John D. Rockefeller. They had the goal of establishing black colleges in the South to train Negro teachers and elites. Du Bois used the term "the talented tenth" to describe the likelihood of one in 10 black men becoming leaders of their race in the world, through methods such as continuing their education, writing books, or becoming directly involved in social change. He strongly believed that blacks needed a classical education to be able to reach their full potential, rather than the industrial education promoted by the Atlanta compromise which was endorsed by Booker T. Washington and some white philanthropists. He saw classical education as the basis for what, in the 20th century, would be known as public intellectuals: Men we shall have only as we make manhood the object of the work of the schools — intelligence, broad sympathy, knowledge of the world that was and is, and of the relation of men to it — this is the curriculum of that Higher Education which must underlie true life. On this foundation we may build bread winning, skill of hand and quickness of brain, with never a fear lest the child and man mistake the means of living for the object of life.[2] In his later life, Du Bois came to believe that leadership could arise from many levels, and grassroots efforts were also important to social change. His stepson David Du Bois tried to publicize those views, writing in 1972: "Dr. Du Bois’ conviction that it’s those who suffered most and have the least to lose that we should look to for our steadfast, dependable and uncompromising leadership."[3] Du Bois writes in his Talented Tenth essay that "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.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Talented_Tenth

• published: 07 Jul 2015
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