Final answer:
Frederick Hoffman was a statistician whose racially biased works contributed to racial inequality by claiming African American inferiority based on mortality rates, which was rebutted by W.E.B. DuBois, who argued these rates were due to socioeconomic conditions.
Step-by-step explanation:
Frederick Hoffman was a statistician for the Prudential Life Insurance Company and authored Race Traits and Tendencies of the American Negro in 1896. Hoffman contended that higher mortality rates among African Americans were indicative of their natural inferiority and predicted the extinction of the Black race. W.E.B. DuBois, an influential African American sociologist, fiercely rebutted Hoffman's claims, asserting that socioeconomic conditions and lack of access to healthcare, not racial inferiority, were the root causes of higher mortality rates. DuBois championed improvements in public health infrastructure and socioeconomic conditions as a means to reduce these rates. Hoffman's contributions, therefore, laid bare the racial inequality and prejudice prevalent in societal structures and stimulated scholarly and social activism to confront and debunk such pernicious beliefs.