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white ruling class among Negroes). Is there any real fundamental difference between DuBois and his friends and the leading group of the N.A.A.C.P.? Of course not. There is no difference in principle- merely tactical differences. Differences on how best to carry out the interests of the white rulers among the Negro masses; on how best to betray the masses in conditions of rising revolutionary upsurge and growing influence of the Communist Party. Let us see what is the real program of DuBois behind these demagogic phrases? This program was revealed most clearly in the symposium conducted in the last four issues of The Crisis. In this symposium the White-Spingarn leadership attempts demagogically to represent the controversy within the N.A.A.C.P. leadership as differences between the "militant" stand of that organization for Negro rights and against segregation as opposed to the Dr. DuBois's group which wants to revise the policy and retreat before Jim-Crowism. In answering this in the April issue of The Crisis, Dr. DuBois unwittingly exposes the demagogic pretenses of the N.A.A.C.P. leadership and its bankruptcy; at the same time he comes forth with the clearest formulation of bourgeois nationalism yet advanced - a program of voluntary segregation. Dr. DuBois says:

"No matter how much we may fulminate about 'No segregation,' there stand the flat facts. Moreover, this situation has in the last quarter century been steadily growing worse."

Then Dr. DuBois explodes the false pretenses upon which the N.A.A.C.P. operates. He says:

"If, as Spingarn asserts, the N.A.A.C.P. has conducted a quarter-century campaign against segregation, then the net result has been little less than nothing."

Continues DuBois:

"When we were living in times of prosperity; when we were 

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making post-war incomes; when our labor was in demand, we perhaps could afford to wait. But today, faced by starvation and economic upheaval, and by the question of being able to survive at all in this land in the reconstruction that is upon us, it is ridiculous not to see, and criminal not to tell the colored people, that they cannot base their salvation upon the empty reiteration of a slogan."

What then is the way out? The learned Doctor answers:

"The only thing that we not only can, but must do, is voluntarily and insistently to organize our economic and social power, no matter how much segregation it involves. Learn to associate with ourselves and to train ourselves for effective association. Organize our strength as consumers; learn to cooperate and use machines and power as producers; train ourselves in methods of democratic control within our own group. Run and support our own institutions."

The Role of the DuBois "Opposition"

The question raised and answered by Dr. DuBois in this controversy is as follows: Can we keep on fooling the masses by the old formula? Dr. DuBois' answer is no. These old panaceas have already outserved their time, they are obsolete. In the present situation of growing political awakening if the Negro masses, we must find new ways, invent new devices if we are to hold these masses under our leadership and thence for capitalism. This is the meaning of Dr. DuBois' "opposition".

The wily Dr. DuBois sees the growth of petty-bourgeois nationalist movements springing up on all sides. He feels that the N.A.A.C.P. can retain its leadership and prestige among the masses only if it comes forward with a more clear-cut, nationalist program, by stronger appeals to race loyalty, race solidarity. In fact, Dr. DuBois' proposal is in reality that N.A.A.C.P. should actually take over the leadership as well as the program of the petty-bourgeois nationalist movements. This means also that the N.A.A.C.P.

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Transcription Notes:
Fixed one typo; the rest should be good to go.