Du Bois: Anti-Colonialist Activist and Theoretician

Abstract

This chapter identifies seven tenets of social thought that characterize W. E. B. Du Bois as an anticolonial activist and theoretician. Race is a preeminent and determinant factor in explaining the human condition. Africa and Africans, though pivotal and legitimate entities in human civilization, have been written out of prevailing historical narratives and must be restored. White racism and White supremacy are not ageless and enduring features of human history but emerged and crystallized during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries as ideological and epistemic derivatives of western global capitalism. Racial capitalism—not just class-based capitalism—is the driver of the social order, both in America and across the globe. Inhumane conflicts and violence are hallmarks of the emergence, development, and sustenance of capitalism. Religion has provided moral justification for both the enslavement and colonization of Africans and people of color. The color line is an entrenched identifier of systemic global White supremacy.