The Souls of Jewish Folk: W.E.B DuBois, Anti-Semitism, and the Color Line
James M. Thomas
University of Georgia Press
The Souls of Jewish Folk argues that late 19th-century Germany’s struggle with its “Jewish question”—what to do with Germany’s Jews—served as an important and to-date underexamined influence on W.E.B. Du Bois’s considerations of America’s anti-Black racism at the turn of the 20th century.
Du Bois is well known for his characterization of the 20th century’s greatest challenge, “the problem of the color line.” This proposition gained prominence in the conception of Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk (1903), which engages the questions of race, racial domination, and racial exploitation. James M. Thomas contends that this conception of racism is haunted by the specter of the German Jew.