In this article we outline the 'walls of whiteness' that make it difficult to teach the sociology of race and racism and make it difficult for students at historically white colleges and universities (HCWUs) to wrestle with these important issues. Most white students enter HWCUs surrounded by these walls -protecting them from attacks on white supremacy -that have multiple layers and therefore are even more difficult to penetrate; yet they must be penetrated. With a few exceptions, the institution of American higher education does not threaten those walls. Instead, college education often bolsters them through curricular and extracurricular experiences, residential and disciplinary isolation, institutional symbols, cultural reproduction, and everyday practices such as grading and classroom interactions. We identify these walls in this article and make suggestions regarding strategies to begin their dismantling.

Positioning Du Bois's arguments in The Souls of Black Folk (1903) within social theory enhances our understanding of the phenomenological dimensions of racial oppression and of how oppressed groups build on members' differences, as well as on what they share, to construct a cosmopolitan and richly textured community. Du Bois wrote Souls just at the beginning of the Great Migration but indicated that geographical dispersion would deepen racial solidarity, enhance the meaningfulness of community, and emancipate individual group members through participation in mainstream society while maintaining their black identity. Du Bois's writings have powerful implications for understanding how to promote racial justice, and contemporary readers might consider that they have implications for social justice more generally. An analysis of black newspapers that were published during the period of 1900 to 1935 illustrates how Du Bois's conceptions were woven into discourse and everyday practices.

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