Towards a discursive theory of racial identity: The souls of black folk as a response to nineteenth-century biological determinism

This essay interprets W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk as a response to nineteenth-century racial science and the ideology of biological determinism. It argues that Souls inverts the racist claims of nineteenth-century science through direct analysis, a style that combines art and reason and makes a methodological shift from studying what Black is to studying what being Black means. Du Bois's critical practice in The Souls of Black Folk moved scholarship along with two conceptual innovations-the veil of race and double consciousness toward a discursive theory of race that foreshadowed cultural/minority studies and critical race theory.