Du Bois abandoned educational persuasion before fully embracing antiracism

Evidence

W. E. B. Du Bois was inspired by the red hot summer like never before, and not just because he was excited about the New Negro, or because he started closely reading (and updating) Karl Marx. In February 1920, he put out the searing essays of Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. Du Bois had wearily come to realize that the segregationist “belief that black folk are sub-human” was not based on any lack of knowledge: “It is simply passionate, deep-seated heritage, and as such can be moved by neither argument nor fact.” In moving away from educational persuasion, Du Bois finally began to turn instead toward a singly antiracist consciousness. But he did not quite reach it. Instead he wrote: “European culture—is it not better than any culture that arose in Africa or Asia? It is.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 824

Categorization

• XREF: Directly tests the reader’s key question: does ignorance produce racism, or does racism outlive knowledge? Du Bois’s realization that new information cannot move the racist supports Kendi’s inversion that ideas follow policy/interest, not knowledge.