Thoughts on Characteristics of Race and Gender Du Bois...

Du Bois versus De Beauvoir: Essential characteristics of race and gender In the debate over equality for both African-Americans and women, the question of nature versus nurture inevitably arises. Although most authors acknowledge that there are differences between these historically discriminated-against groups and members of the hegemonic culture, the origin of those differences has been hotly debated. While the African-American intellectual W.E.B Du Bois was inclined to conceptualize African-Americans as a race, feminists of the 1950s like Simone De Beauvoir were more inclined to see the values ascribed to the genders as mainly rooted in cultural norms established by men, not as essential attributes of women. The turn-of-the-century W.E.B Du Bois wrote his seminal text The Souls of Black Folk in response to what was then called the Negro Problem. The Negro Problem was the question of whether African-Americans should be treated as equal within the firmament of American society and whether integration or separate but equal were more viable doctrines. Du Bois wrote against such advocates of acceptance like Booker T. Washington, and instead demanded parity for his people in terms of opportunities. In the first essay of Du Bois book entitled Our Spiritual Strivings, Du Bois writes of his frustrations as a young, African-American child who was intelligent and thoughtful yet all too well aware of how his race would limit his ability to pursue his studies although he