identity played in the contradictory perspectives he presents—that of the elite Victorian young gentleman committed to the ideas of meritocracy and universalism and that of a son of a people struggling to live in freedom after two hundred years of a bondage justified on racial grounds. DuBois's struggle to reconcile these two orientations is one of the fascinating aspects of The Philadelphia Negro. One gets the sense that it was very difficult for him to accept the idea that blacks were second-class citizens because at the time he wrote the book he still considered himself to be a full citizen of the United States, even a member of the elite. This tension may account for the ultimately ambivalent assessment of the Philadelphia Negro's situation with which DuBois leaves the reader.16
In general, capitalists flagrantly violated the attitude of noblesse oblige DuBois originally imputed to them, and the discovery of this truth disillusioned him. Anticipating Herbert Blumer17 and others, he came to feel that, although exacerbated by economic competition, the existence of racism and race prejudice in American society was very deep, particularly when the racial advantage of whites allowed them to prevail in the workplace. Moreover, such racial and ethnic feelings encouraged group identification for the purpose of furthering group economic interests. The capitalists, by exploiting these socioeconomic forces, were profiting from the low position of the blacks. When he uncovered this behavior as a young man, DuBois harbored the hope that the inherently noble, if opportunistic, American capitalist could eventually be persuaded to change his ways. Toward the end of his life, however, DuBois became profoundly disillusioned with America. Renouncing his American citizenship, he embraced pan-Africanism and moved to Ghana, where he died in 1963 just as a new and more militant generation of blacks was marching on Washington to demand redress of the injustices he was the first to chronicle.
The Philadelphia Negro is also a seminal work in the field of race relations.18 DuBois's discovery that race has caste-like implications for blacks in Philadelphia also anticipates the work of others many years later. The major themes of The Philadelphia Negro are replayed in such important works as Frazier's The Negro Family in the United States and Black Bourgeoisie;19 Drake and Cayton's Black Metropolis;20 and William Wilson's The Declining Significance of Race and The Truly Disadvantaged.21
In his comments on the twoness of American society, on the separateness and inequality of its white and black worlds,22 DuBois anticipated the work of Gunnar Myrdal,23 Daniel Patrick Moynihan,24 and the Kerner Commission Report.25 He saw the black community as being in danger of permanently separating from the mainstream white society, a state of affairs that both Myrdal and Kerner—and most recently Andrew Hacker26—saw as coming to pass over half a century later.
At the end of the book, DuBois discusses the responsibilities he attributed to white people and black people in the situation he presented. But, strikingly, he does not strongly revisit his economic arguments. Curiously, he seems to let these dogs lie. Could this have been due to the influence of the CSA and his desire and hope of positively influencing the capitalists? From whites he asked for greater understanding and tolerance. They should work to try to include the blacks, to reach out to them, train them, give them a leg up so they could recover from the experience of slavery. But at the same time, he considered the blacks to be at fault as well. They had not done all they should have been doing in terms of leadership. The talented and successful among the blacks should have been reaching out, setting examples, helping out their own brethren.27 In noting an absence of leadership, he encouraged people to take on such roles. He assumed that if they did the situation for blacks would improve.
DuBois's personal engagement in these problems, along with the unique background that informed his preconceptions, make the whole book provocative. He is not out to transform the system radically. He appears to be very clearly interested in reforming the system, his insights into the nonexistent benevolent despot notwithstanding. He feels that if blacks work hard and act decently, their lives will improve. And he hopes that in presenting the situation plainly in The Philadelphia Negro he will persuade the capitalists to support the forces that encourage the economic participation of black Americans and thus to make life better for all Americans. A hundred years after DuBois made these observations, an appraisal of his predictions reveals just how far-sighted a social scientist he was.
The Philadelphia Negro Today
What would DuBois find if he walked the streets of the Seventh Ward today? The area has certainly changed. The upper-class WASPs have mostly been routed and have moved to the suburbs. From DuBois's day through the middle of the twentieth century, the old Seventh Ward remained a major “Negro section” of the city. It continued to attract blacks from the South, and during the two world wars it swelled. But during the 1950s and early 1960s, a federal program known as “urban renewal” emerged. Through this program, large tracts of the black community were declared “slums” and thereby made eligible for formal “condemnation.” The local redevelopment authority thus obtained possession of these sections of the city and then made them available to developers who promised to “renew” the area in accord with its historical architecture. As this occurred, the social class and complexions of the residents changed. The general area has become increasingly well-to-do and white. It is now an upper-middle-class community increasingly made up of the present-day counterparts of the ethnic whites with whom the blacks of DuBois's day often clashed. The descendants of the ethnic whites are for the most part tolerant of the few blacks who remain, having in large part assimilated and divested themselves of their particularistic ethnic identities. However, in race relations, a strong caste line still exists.
Major changes have occurred in housing use. Physically, the neighborhood consists of spacious urban townhouses along the main streets, with much smaller houses, originally servants'quarters, on tiny streets behind them. The tangle of small streets and alleyways that DuBois found swarming with criminal and morally questionable activity now house mostly white young professionals and are characterized by real estate agents as “quaint” and “charming.” It is now fashionable for the professionals to live in these small houses. They cost considerably less to buy than the large houses, many of which have been subdivided into apartments or converted into offices for foundations or professional groups. The new occupants often spend considerable amounts on elegant interior decoration, sometimes making substantial structural changes as well.
South Street has changed greatly since DuBois's time but would be faintly recognizable to him today. At the heart of the western end is Graduate Hospital, which has recently built a new facility and continues to expand, spurring gentrification in the neighborhood. There are businesses catering to neighborhood residents, such as dry cleaners, pizzerias, and grocery stores, as well as refurbished homes or new houses built on the sites of demolished structures. There are also stretches of abandoned buildings awaiting demolition and empty lots awaiting rebuilding, especially between Twelfth and Sixteenth Streets. But this section also includes vestiges of its previous life, such as a former jazz bar and a former bank building already in use in DuBois's day and recently converted into an arts center.
The eastern end of South Street has become a business strip, including two chain drugstores and a supermarket between Ninth and Eleventh Streets. From about Sixth Street east to the Delaware River, South Street takes on a unique flavor as a bright lights district. At times, particularly on summer nights, a carnival atmosphere prevails. An astounding diversity of people—whites, blacks, Asians, gays, the conventional, and the openly nonconformist—can be seen walking up and down the street and patronizing stores. A wide assortment of eating and drinking establishments remain open late into the evening. There are gift shops; clothing stores offering a variety of styles, particularly punk; furniture stores; a large record store; jewelry stores; cheap restaurants and expensive restaurants; nightclubs; and some holdovers from days when the area was more residential, such as a store selling bedding. People, particularly young people, come here from all over, from the adjoining gentrified Society Hill neighborhood, from other parts of the city, from the suburbs. However, reminiscent of the area's earlier history, as the
