Whatever Afro-American people’s identity may be (and a well-argued recent article proposes doing away with the concept altogether14), it cannot be equated with their race. After years of probing them for something of value or use, W. E. B. Du Bois repudiated all efforts to define race as a characteristic or attribute of its victims, whether the definition hinged on biology, culture, or identity (supposing “identity” to mean an individual’s or a group’s sense of self). The black man is not someone of a specified ancestry or culture, he decided, and certainly not someone who so identifies
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