Back in 1903, W.E.B. Du Bois—sociologist, historian, civil rights activist and eventual NAACP co-founder—published The Souls Of Black Folk, a seminal collection of essays fleshing out his views on race and the unique obstacles that plagued people of color.

A famous quote from the book, “The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color line,” remains true well over a century later. And according to a pair of this country’s foremost experts in the study of racism, author and lecturer Neely Fuller Jr. and psychiatrist Dr. Frances Cress Welsing, there is still a long way to go in resolving it.

“There’s been a concerted effort to push racism off the table for discussion. Before I established the now widely-accepted meaning of the term in the 1970s, racism was considered a problem that hadn’t been sufficiently defined,” Welsing stated recently by phone. “It’s about a total system structure that has, as its goal objective, white genetic survival. The people who classify themselves as white represent one-tenth of the people on the planet and are now becoming a minority [in the U.S.], so this is very disturbing to them.”

Welsing, a Chicago native and third-generation physician, entered Howard University College of Medicine in 1958. As she completed a residency at D.C.’s St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, she noticed that the black patients’ common experiences with racism were being overlooked rather than acknowledged as a cause of their mental health issues.

Welsing’s signature book, The Isis Papers: The Keys to the Colors, was published in 1992 and discusses racism as a global system designed to maintain dominance over people of color “in all areas of people activity; economics, education, entertainment, labor, law, politics, religion, sex and war” to ensure their genetic survival as a global minority.

Welsing, who lectures audiences and medical conferences across the country, says that the main difference between ‘prejudice’ and ‘racism’ is the unequal power balance.

“A black person can stand on the corner all day calling white people names. That’s just somebody talking. They have no control over white people’s lives,” she said. “But with racism, it’s a 24/7 stressor that controls the entirety of a black person’s life. [Discussing racism] is not about hating white people, being disrespectful or being discourteous, that’s cheap. Everyone needs to understand what it is so that we can solve the problem.”

What won’t help to make a difference, according to Welsing, is dismissing racism’s existence and impact on both the past and the present. (For example, saying ‘slavery was a long time ago.’). “It’s not about just slavery, but about the entire history of the relationship between people who classify themselves as white on planet Earth and all other non-white people on planet Earth,” she said. “Yet no matter who you are, if you are talking about racism and white supremacy, you are going to be perceived as a threat. ”

Despite the difficulties that may arise, Welsing encourages those seeking progress to continue pressing the point that the world is resembles anything but a ‘post-racial’ society.