Radical Perspectives on Race and Racism This special issue of
Socialism and Democracy marks the centennial of W.E.B. Du Bois’s
classic, The Souls of Black Folk. At the same time, going beyond
our coverage of the Reparations movement in S&D #31, it deepens
our commitment to implementing a thoroughly multiracial vision
of the goals evoked by the name of this journal. The close link
that exists in principle between the struggle against racism and
the struggle for socialism was well articulated by Du Bois
himself. One of the most celebrated assertions of his 1903 work
was, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the
color line.” Revisiting that prophecy fifty years later, he
wrote (citing Marx’s influence): I still think today as
yesterday that the color line is a great problem of this
century. But today I see more clearly than yesterday that back
of the problem of race and color, lies a greater problem which
both obscures and implements it: and that is the fact that so
many civilized persons are