"The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line"

When W. E. B. Du Bois declared that the problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line, he pointed directly to the centrality of race and racial divisions as the dominant issue shaping modern society. The color line refers to the arbitrary but deeply entrenched societal barriers that separate people based on skin color, specifically the divide between white and nonwhite populations. For Du Bois, this line was not just a social distinction but a powerful, structural force that maintained inequality, denied opportunities, and perpetuated systems of oppression.

At the dawn of the twentieth century, Du Bois observed a world being reshaped by industrialization, imperialism, and migration, yet he saw that within these changes, the old hierarchies of race were not only persisting but in some ways intensifying. In America, the legacy of slavery had given way to Jim Crow laws, disenfranchisement, and waves of racial violence. Globally, European colonialism was justified and maintained through racist ideologies that asserted white superiority and denied colonized people their rights and humanity. The color line thus structured who had access to power, economic resources, political participation, and dignity.

Du Bois’s insight also pointed to the ways in which the color line was not simply a binary divide but a matrix of relationships, among Black, white, and other peoples of color, affecting every aspect of life: law, education, labor, housing, personal relationships, and even self-perception. Overcoming the problem of the color line, for Du Bois, required more than individual goodwill; it called for radical transformation of social institutions and of the ways people understood themselves and each other. His statement was both a diagnosis and a challenge, urging society to confront, rather than ignore, the realities of race and racism, and to envision a future not governed by the tyranny of the color line.