Even Du Bois’s positive fiction unwittingly reinforced racist ideas

Evidence

The cross-class, cross-generational, cross-ideological portrayals debate was on in the 1920s, and it was centered in the portrayals of blues and then jazz, in Nigger Heaven, and then in Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem in 1928. Home to Harlem, the first Black-authored best seller, made Du Bois feel “distinctly like taking a bath.” Raging, Du Bois released his own Dark Princess: A Romance that year, portraying strong, intelligent women and sensitive, intelligent men, as he always did in his fiction, seemingly unaware that he, too, was reinforcing racist ideas. — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 850

Categorization

• QUESTION: Kendi claims Du Bois was ‘seemingly unaware’ he was reinforcing racism through positive portrayals — worth probing whether this is fair to Du Bois’s own evolving theory of art and race.
• XREF: Connects to the general point that well-meaning assimilationist speech can unintentionally feed the racial hierarchy it aims to dismantle.