Jeff Goodwin recently published in Catalyst a review of the book Karida L. Brown and I wrote, The Sociology of W. E. B. Du Bois.¹ In this review, Goodwin argues that we “have written a tendentious book that will confuse and mislead readers who are interested in Du Bois’s work and legacy.”² He asserts that we deny Du Bois’s Marxism and challenges the idea that there is a Du Boisian sociology — which Goodwin always puts in scare quotes — that is different from Marxism. It is important to respond to these claims, because if Goodwin is right and Du Bois’s thinking can be contained within Marxism, then there is no need to reconsider the colonial and racial underpinnings of sociology.³ There is no need to rethink the theoretical canon or the methods of the discipline. In this response, I address the question of whether Du Bois’s thought can be contained within the Marxist tradition or whether there is a distinct Du Boisian sociology. I argue that the latter is the case.

First, a clarification. Goodwin contends that we advocate a Du Boisian sociology that “has been safely cleansed of any Marxist taint so that Du Bois might align more readily with [our] own liberal ‘intersectionalist’ and ‘race-centered’ perspective.”⁴ Contrary to this assertion (one of many inaccurate ones he makes about our book), we do not deny Du Bois’s connection to Marxism. We cite Du Bois on his admiration for Karl Marx and his work, and we argue that he incorporated many ideas from Marx. Furthermore, we do not construct a liberal Du Bois, but we view him as an anti-colonial thinker.⁵ Indeed, we argue that “Du Bois does not simply adopt Marx’s analytical framework. Rather, he merges Marx’s ideas with his own analysis of the central role of the color line in structuring modernity.”⁶

Before I address Goodwin’s claims, it is helpful to present his characterization of how Marxism approaches the analysis of race and racism. He writes: