  On Gooding-Williams’s account, Du Bois 1) treats differences in the color of men as the more or less stable set of phenomena undergirding the concept of race, and 2) characterizes the concept of race as an intricate web of manifold and often conflicting interpretations of those differences formed over the course of his lifetime. Autobiography, a narrative form of historical inquiry, is the vehicle through which Du Bois genealogically analyzes that web of interpretations, for to reconstruct the story of his life is, in his view, to disentangle these interpretations, one from the other, in order to show that and how they have been exemplified in his life (Gooding-Williams, 2014,  166–167).[24]