Where did red go? Lewis Henry Morgan's evolutionary inheritance and U.S. racial imagination (W.E.B. Du Bois)

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21 Scopus citations

Abstract

Before W. E. B. Du Bois stated in 1903 that "the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line" (1968, 23, 41), the hegemonic model of racialization in the United States was comprised of red, white, and black. Du Bois's "color-line," Steven Conn states, reflects the "disappearance" of red from U.S. racial imagination (2004, 1). Although Du Bois conceptualized the "color-line" in global terms, embracing the "relation of the darker to the lighter races" in Asia, Africa, America and "the islands of the sea" (1968, 23), his emphasis on the United States inscribed the black/ white divide as a national binary. This shift occurred in the representational realm of national narrative. The "color-line" model was no more accurate
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)201-229
Number of pages29
JournalNew Centennial Review
Volume7
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Jan 2007

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Cultural Studies
  • Sociology and Political Science
  • Literature and Literary Theory

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