Race, Nation, and the Color-Line in the Twenty-First Century: A Du Boisian Analysis

Abstract

Abstract This article argues that Du Bois’s tripartite framework consisting of the Veil, souls, and double-consciousness helps us analyze and understand the resurgence of racialized nationalism today. I juxtapose Du Bois’s early writings on German nationalism and antisemitism with his later writings on American nationalism and anti-black racism to demonstrate how antisemitism in Germany and anti-black racism in America function as constitutive elements for their respective nationalist discourses at the turn of the twentieth century. I argue that Du Bois’s analysis of the “double problem” of German nationalism served as an important precursor of his theory of the “double problem” of American nationalism. Du Bois’s concepts, when taken together, provide a still-relevant framework through which to understand contemporary expressions of racism and xenophobia that typify emergent nationalist movements in the twenty-first century.