  Here, Du Bois’s distinguishes between the factors that generally (usually) characterize a race and the factors that must always characterize a race; that is, the factors that constitute a group of people as a race. Du Bois’s definition proposes that a group of human beings counts as a spiritually distinct race if, and only if, the members of the group have a common history, common traditions and impulses, and common (voluntary and involuntary) strivings; counting as members of a spiritually distinct race does not require a common blood or a common language, however, although the members of a spiritually distinct race may indeed speak the same language or have the same blood coursing through their veins (see Lott, 1992–93; Gooding-Williams, 1996 and 2009; and Sundstrom, 2003). Du Bois’s definition asserts that each spiritually distinct race is, as such, constitutively constructed by the historical and social factors the definition specifies as making a race a race.