Du Bois was an influential scholar and activist who was the first Black American to earn a PhD and helped found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. He remains best known for his classic 1903 book
The Souls of Black Folk. Du Bois was one of the earliest and most astute theorists of many concepts central to contemporary scholarship on
race and
racism, including double consciousness (which
Kendi calls
dueling consciousness) and racial capitalism. But Kendi notes that Du Bois’s thinking also evolved over time: for instance, he refused to believe in
colorism for most of his life and tended to think that educating white people would stop racism. However, he changed his thinking in the 1930s and realized that racism is about power, not education, so most white people will not accept racial equity until it becomes in their self-interest to do so.