Does locating race in a common history work the way Du Bois wants it to?

Du Bois, for his part, tries to define the term 'race' so that it's free from the unavoidable biological/scientific problems. His idea of race is instead more in line with Locke's idea of looking at race as a largely cultural phenomenon. He sees the uniting glue for these cultures being a common social history. This condition of sharing a common history looks to be the best determinant of race for Du Bois.

I think his construction is problematic for how he applies it in the article today (I believe he posits that there are 8 races). The racial bond between African-Americans and Africans is their similar cultural values (I'm not sure how much scrutiny that can survive, unless it is construed very broadly), but it is mostly their past history as an oppressed, colonized people. Yet, if that type of relationship is sufficient condition for their bond into a 'black race', then how can Du Bois claim that it is not so for people of different geographies and skin color? I.e. Why would that condition of being colonized and experencing all the things that come with the categories colonization artificially creates not be sufficient in the cases of some colonized Asian peoples (e.g. Phillipines, or those regions once under the domination imperial Japan)? Don't they have to be considered racially black then? Or does this just demonstrate, that from Du Bois's ideas we should consider African-Americans as a different "race" from Africans, albeit two races with some significant sociological and historical parallels? And the next logical question from that is probably whether or not we should even call this race?

EDIT: In light of class discussion today, I think DuBois could address the Asian quandry, through their lack of physical similarities. I still believe, however, that the divide between various African cultures (and lets be specific here: Africa and its people are not monolithic) and African-Americans may be too great for them to be classified as one race, from the Du Duboisian rationale, due to strong enough historical dissimilarities

-Brian