Names and Referents

This chapter addresses the question of name and referent (object). Using the W. E. Du Bois’s response to a high schooler, Richard Burton, in 1928, the chapter discusses some of the controversies surrounding the use of “negro” to identify Africans on the continent and in the diaspora. The issues involved are the disagreement around the name “negro,” arguments advanced to justify the continued use of “negro” and the criticisms advanced to prove that using “negro” was debasing. The chapter also critically examines the arguments on both sides of the debate using Carter G. Woodson’s response to name change proponents. Du Bois and Woodson criticize the movement for the abandonment of the name “negro,” considering changing the name “negro” frivolous. While they argue that the name and the object it identifies should not be conflated, their discussions are plagued by contradictions. However, they make a very informative distinction between the name and the thing-it-self, an important phenomenological distinction useful in the decoupling of “blackness” from the human skin discussed in Chapter 5 . Notable in Du Bois’s and Woodson’s trivialization of name change is how they conceptually dismissed arguments for name change only to embrace similar arguments through recollection based on lived experience.