Du Bois reversed his Talented Tenth view, finding the Black elite ideologically reactionary.

Evidence

Immersed in research into post-Civil War “labor history,” Du Bois was conscious of the problems that had beset mass movements bringing together whites and Blacks—problems that he felt spokesmen for Communism ignored. Though now clearly ambivalent toward the Black petit bourgeoisie, he was still relying on the notion of racial solidarity (imposed from without) to defend his class from attacks from the Left. But by now Du Bois had begun to temper his own “Talented Tenth” program of social mobilization. At the conference he seemed mildly distressed with the “vanguardism” with which he had been earlier identified. In point of fact he had appeared to reverse his position. The Black elite of which he had been so optimistic in its “natural” function of leadership of the Black masses was now understood to be ideologically reactionary, a lesson he was learning within the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. This question of ideology and its impact on human motives and social relations would become a dominant theme of Black Reconstruction. … In accord with his criticisms of the American Communist Party, Du Bois was addressing himself directly to the problem of the alienation of the Black elite from the Black masses. He did this in part by reminding that elite, subtly, of its dependence upon the masses. Yet he still had not himself reached the level of historical comprehension that he would demonstrate in Black Reconstruction. There he would come to a realization of the historical forces emergent from the people, specifically the capacities of the Black masses to take steps decisive to their own liberation. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 920

Categorization

• XREF: Du Bois’s reversal from vanguardism to mass-centered revolution is a key step in the arc of the Black radical tradition’s rise — the shift from elite-led to mass-driven struggle. — connects to: The Talented Tenth existed only in theory, never as a real workforce proportion. — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 210