The racialization of class struggle in Black Reconstruction

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/1984-9222.2025.e109342

Keywords:

Black Marxism, Du Boisian Sociology, Black Reconstruction

Abstract

This article examines the debates surrounding class and race in Du Bois's seminal work, Black Reconstruction, specifically addressing the contemporary tension between Du Boisian sociologists and Marxist critics regarding the primacy of each category in the analysis of the modern world. We argue that Du Bois aimed to avoid both class and race reductionism. Instead, the Pan-African leader offered crucial alternatives: understanding capitalism as a racialized system and producing a historical analysis that views class struggle as a racialized one

Author Biographies

Juliana Góes, Binghamton University

Juliana Góes is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Binghamton University. Her research interests encompass Black radicalism, abolitionism, and decolonial praxis. Her work is conducted in partnership with various grassroots movements, especially Black organizations, sex worker groups, urban settlements, and the anti-prison movement. She is currently working on two book projects. The first, titled Decolonizing Cities: Black Movements and Territories of Life in Brazil, examines the intersections between Black movements in Latin America, self-determination, and urban politics. The second, Du Bois on Latin America and the Caribbean: Trans-American Pan-Africanism and Global Sociology, co-authored with Agustín Lao-Montes and Jorge Vasquez, explores Black internationalism in the Americas.

Jorge Daniel Vásquez, University of Regina

Jorge Daniel Vásquez is a professor in the Department of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina. His work brings together Du Boisian sociology, global historical sociology, social theory, and the sociology of race. His research on Du Bois has been published in Du Bois Review, Gender & Society, and The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology (forthcoming), and has received five awards from the American Sociological Association, including the Ida B. Wells –Troy Duster Award. His co-authored book, Du Bois on Latin America: Global Sociology and Transamerican Pan-Africanism (with Juliana Góes and Agustín Lao), is under contract with SUNY Press. He is currently working on the book The Sociology of the Global Color Line: W.E.B. Du Bois, Irene Diggs, and the Critique of Race in the Americas.

Agustin Laó-Montes, University of Massachusetts Amherst

He holds a PhD in historical sociology and is an Afro-descendant intellectual and activist of Puerto Rican origin. He is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts, a researcher at the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and a faculty member in the doctoral program in Afro-American Studies. His publications address globalization, social movements, urban politics, ethno-racial identities, Caribbean and Afro-diasporic thought, decolonial theory, African studies, and intercultural education. An active participant in the World Social Forum and Afro-descendant networks throughout the Americas, he serves on the coordinating committee of the Regional Articulation of Afro-Descendants in Améfrica and the Caribbean (ARAAC) and is the General Coordinator of Malunga: Network for Global Justice and Against Anti-Black Racism. He has held visiting positions at FLACSO-Quito, Universidad del Valle, Universidad de Antioquia, the Federal University of Bahia, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and the University of Puerto Rico, and is affiliated with doctoral programs at Universidad Externado (Bogotá) and Universidad Simón Bolívar (Barranquilla). He has lectured widely across Latin America, Africa, the United States, and Europe, and currently serves as a special advisor to Colombia’s “government of change” on anti-racist policymaking and historical reparations.

References

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Published

2025-12-09

How to Cite

GÓES, Juliana; VÁSQUEZ, Jorge Daniel; LAÓ-MONTES, Agustin. The racialization of class struggle in Black Reconstruction. Revista Mundos do Trabalho, Florianópolis, v. 17, p. 1–13, 2025. DOI: 10.5007/1984-9222.2025.e109342. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufsc.br/index.php/mundosdotrabalho/article/view/109342. Acesso em: 10 feb. 2026.

Issue

Vol. 17 (2025)

Section

Discussions on W. E. B. Du Bois’s Black Reconstruction

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The authors assign to Revista Mundos do Trabalho the exclusive rights of first publication, with the work simultaneously licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) 4.0 International. This license allows third parties to remix, adapt and create from the published work, giving due credit for authorship and initial publication in this journal. Authors are authorized to take additional contracts separately, for the non-exclusive distribution of the version of the work published in this journal (e.g. publish in an institutional repository, personal website, publish a translation, or as a book chapter), with authorship and publication in this journal.

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