ABSTRACT
Current focus on black thinkers and public intellectuals has led many folks to speculate whether we are seeing a resurgence of W.E.B. DuBois's vision of a talented tenth, which he initially defined as “leadership of the Negro race in America by a trained few.” However, contemporary thinkers do not call attention to the memorial address (Boulé Journal, 15 October 1948) wherein DuBois critiqued his earlier vision of a talented tenth. In this address he acknowledges that when he suggested the need for a talented group that would spearhead racial uplift, he simply assumed that these individuals would be committed to the collective well-being of black people—that would want to use their talents to benefit everywhere. He contends:
I assumed that with knowledge, sacrifice would automatically follow. In my youth and idealism, I did not realize that selfishness is more natural than sacrifice…. When I came out of college into the world of work, I realized that it was quite possible that my plan of training a talented tenth might put in 166control and power, a group of selfish, self-indulgent, well-to-do men, whose basic interest in solving the Negro problem was personal; personal freedom and unhampered enjoyment and use of the world, without any real care, or certainly no arousing care, as to what became of the mass of American Negroes, or the mass of any people.
