Scholarship Denied: The Phelps Stokes Fund’s Use of the ‘Race Relations’ Paradigm to Silence Du Bois’ Critiques of Racial Capitalism

Abstract

Sociologists commonly trace the concept of racial capitalism to Cedric Robinson. However, this lineage is problematic because it strips the theoretical framing of its radical origins. Recent scholarship argues the term racial capitalism originates earlier in the Marxist tradition in South Africa. Furthermore, the broader problematic of racism as integral to the maintenance and promotion of capitalism, originates even earlier than the term itself. I argue, the problematic of racial capitalism, in which ideologies of human differentiation are used to maintain and promote dispossession and coerced labor within capitalism, is integral to W.E.B. Du Bois’ scholarship on US imperialism during the Cold War. Furthermore, Du Bois articulated a critique of racial capitalism that also functioned as a critique of the American sociology of race. However, the Phelps Stokes Fund promoted American sociology’s ‘race relations’ paradigm to marginalize this critique.