The Sociology of Race: Du Bois\u27s Challenge to Biological Explanations of Racial Inequality

W. E. B. Du Bois was the first scholar to develop a sociology of race—a social science based on scientific principles and methods that could analyze the social causes of differences between the well-being and status of Black people versus white people in America. Defining race as a social category, he refuted the dominant claim that Black people’s subordinate social position stemmed naturally from innate biological traits. His writings promoting a “talented tenth” of Black people as a strategy for political advancement has sparked disagreement among scholars of Du Bois over whether he completely renounced a biological definition of race. Examining the Du Boisian sociology of race helps to clarify Du Bois’s insights on the distinction between a biological and constructionist definition of race, his rejection of eugenics, and his pathbreaking understanding of the relationship between race and racism more broadly