Black Reconstruction marked Du Bois’s first break with the Black elite he belonged to

Evidence

One of the most revealing aspects of Black Reconstruction was Du Bois’s assessment of the Black petit bourgeoisie, that element of Black society with which he had been most closely associated for most of his then 67 years. For the first time in his public pronouncements, he was resolved to expose the extent to which his beloved elite, through the logic of its own development, had moved apart from the Black masses. As he reckoned it, the process of bourgeoisification and alienation that had begun during slavery had not revealed its contradiction until the Reconstruction. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 961

Categorization

• XREF: Du Bois’s reckoning with the Black petit bourgeoisie’s distance from the masses parallels Robinson’s broader theme of class stratification inside Black society developed throughout the book.