ABSTRACT
In what was perhaps the first extended analysis of whiteness, in a chapter in his autobiography “Darkwater,” W. E. B. Du Bois (1920:497-498) noted that: “the discovery of personal whiteness among the world’s people is a very modern thing. . . . The ancient world would have laughed at such a distinction . . . we have changed all that, and the world in a sudden, emotional conversion has discovered that it is white and by that token, wonderful!”
