ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on W. E. B. Du Bois's imaginative construction of the Jew, particularly as expressed in his masterwork, The Souls of Black Folk. It argues that Du Bois's attitude toward Jews is bound up with, and cannot be properly understood without attending to his intellectual engagement with the problem of nationalism. In The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois conceded a double nationality to the black, who could be "both a Negro and an American". Du Bois wanted to do no less than to reconfigure American nationalism by reconstruing the Negro as a central aspect of America. Du Bois did not accept the Jewish model. His understanding of the Negro Problem denied him both solutions. By 1915, Du Bois was writing in The Crisis, "if the Negroes of the United States want to know what organization is and what it can accomplish along racial lines they should buy the American Jewish Year Book".
