Between the Is and the Ought: Abolition Democracy and Du Boisian Futures in Sociological Praxis

Abstract

Across W. E. B. Du Bois’s long life, as in our current moment, conversations about race were contested in the general public as well as on university campuses. We are living in yet another “revolutionary situation,” to echo James Baldwin, who, in speaking to a group of educators in 1963 just weeks after Du Bois’s death, insisted that we be prepared to “go for broke.” In this essay, we offer a model for how sociology instructors can go for broke collectively. We take advantage of the fortuitous situation where we independently and concurrently have called attention to Du Bois as “the teacher denied” and “the educator derived,” and offer here an instructional compass that draws on, extends, and unites the various strengths of our published work. We want to use this new collaboration to challenge ourselves, and to build on recent calls by writers and organizers for an abolitionist imaginary that guides relations within a teaching community and informs pedagogical tactics both inside and beyond the university classroom. The instructional compass we offer is guided by the need for deeper theorizing of the historical present and past; reconfigures traditional horizontal relationships with an eye toward community building; considers the stratified nature of higher education and the need for new ways to support and invest in the work of historically Black institutions and non-elite institutions; and embraces an artistic and humanist ethic as a necessary counterweight to the typical (scientific) standardized curriculum.