The Talented Tenth

“The Negro race, like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men. The problem of education, then, among Negroes must first of all deal with the Talented Tenth; it is the problem of developing the Best of this race that they may guide the Mass away from the contamination and death of the Worst, in their own and other races.”

Du Bois states his major thesis in the first sentence. For the African American community to advance, an elite of exceptional men must be trained to lead them. Such training requires a college education. This assertion frames the entire essay; the remainder is an attempt to persuade the reader (especially, in context, the 1903 African American reader) that this assertion is true.

“Negro leadership, therefore, sought from the first to rid the race of this awful incubus that it might make way for natural selection and the survival of the fittest.”

This sentence is Du Bois’s most direct statement related to Social Darwinism. He argues that the “awful incubus” of slavery had to be eliminated so that African Americans could participate in normal social relations, which are conceived as operating by “natural selection and the survival of the fittest.” By alluding to well-known sociological terms, Du Bois can explain in a few words his understanding of society.

“After emancipation came a new group of educated and gifted leaders: Langston, Bruce and Eliot, Greener, Williams and Payne.”

Throughout the essay, Du Bois alludes to individuals or institutions to show that an educated elite was operative in the past and is still operative at the time the essay was written. The assumption is that the names alone will be familiar to the reader and will help convey the argument.