Lewis R. Gordon’s essay focuses on Du Bois’s shift from New England liberalism to international radicalism and his global influence in Africana thought, despite his focus on African American politics. Though Du Bois’s expectation of equality for black people in the United States was a supremely radical idea on its own, it was his association with the black tradition of addressing social contradictions and imagining a future of grappling with them that led to the development of his radical philosophical anthropology. Du Bois, like many other Africana scholars, used his theories to express why black people could no longer wait to challenge the status quo. Therefore, Africana political theorists must assert the humanity of people of African descent, which necessitates an explanation of why they are human and how they have historically been excluded from definitions of humanity.
