My article "Queering the Color Line within the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Transwar Transpacific" released in the journal American Studies! Read the abstract here.
AI-generated summary:
This article re-examines W. E. B. Du Bois's engagement with Asia during the transwar period (roughly 1910s-1950s). Williams argues against the common scholarly narrative that Du Bois was a naive apologist for Japanese imperialism who later simply switched his support to Communist China. Instead, he positions Du Bois as a sophisticated "realist-idealist" whose primary commitment was to regionalism from below—a pan-Asian and pan-African strategy to counter the rising tide of liberal pluralism and racial capitalism being advanced by both the American and Japanese empires.
Key Arguments
Beyond "Afro-Orientalism" and Nation-Centric Views: Williams challenges the idea that Du Bois's interest in Asia was a form of "Afro-orientalism" or that his politics followed a simple pro-Japan then pro-China trajectory. He argues that Du Bois's thinking was more consistent and rooted in a long-standing critique of the global color line.
The "Color Line within the Color Line": This is the article's central concept borrowed from Du Bois himself. It is not simply a line between "Afro" and "Asian" that needs to be crossed for solidarity. Instead, it names the structure of modern racism itself, which replicates dominative hierarchies even after white supremacy fades. It is the internal ranking and exploitation generated by racial capitalism that persists within and between non-white groups (e.g., Japan colonizing Korea, or elite Asians looking down on Black Americans). This "inside line" remains a problem even as the "outside line" of global white dominance weakens.
Du Bois and Pan-Asianism from Below: Williams connects Du Bois's thought to the "pan-Asianism from below" of figures like Sun Yat-sen. This was an anticolonial, regionalist sentiment that sought Sino-Japanese cooperation to resist the Westphalian nation-state system and Western exploitation. Du Bois saw this as a viable "realist-idealist" path, where strategic alliances (realism) could be used for emancipatory ends (idealism). His 1930s statements supporting Japan's role in Asia were, in this view, a form of "strategic orientalism" —a tactical rhetorical move to counter the hypocritical moralism and material dominance of the West, not an endorsement of Japanese militarism itself.
A New Reading of Dark Princess (1928): Williams uses the novel to ground his argument, positioning it as a work of "queer praxis." He focuses on the often-overlooked character of the Japanese baron, who serves as the main antagonist. The baron represents a realist, elitist, and anticommunist pan-Asianism that excludes Black people.
The novel's triadic relationship (Black American Matthew, Indian Princess Kautilya, and the Japanese Baron) explores the "color line within a color line."
The famous conclusion—the birth of an Afro-Indian child—is not a simple resolution. The baron is absent, and the "line within a line" remains unresolved. Williams argues this queers the text by:
Rejecting the heteronormative reproduction of U.S. liberal pluralism (Matthew's failed marriage to Sara).
Foregrounding the limits of racial reproduction as a solution to global hierarchies.
Exploring the clash between realist and idealist futures and the difficulty of bridging the provincial and the cosmopolitan.
Conclusion
Williams concludes that Du Bois's transwar writings, particularly Dark Princess, offer a prescient framework for understanding the 21st century. The "color line within a color line" is the enduring problem of racial capitalism, which persists in new forms (like "developed" vs. "developing" nations) even as overt white supremacy declines. Du Bois's work, especially his use of messianic and non-linear temporality in fiction, provides a way to think about emancipation beyond the competing realist strategies of nation-states and empires, making it a precursor to contemporary queer regionalist critique.
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