Dubois V Washington
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W. E. B. Du Bois and Booker T. Washington were the two dominant Black leaders of American history during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both men had the same goals–eradicating racism, segregation, and discrimination against their race. However, the means to achieve such ends were vastly different, thus the paradox of these Promethean figures have been revisited 100 years later as Black people seek to grapple with their ideas even in the midst of a 40-year, largely self-inflicted genocide.
As America crossed into the twenty-first century, race relations between Blacks and Whites are steadily deteriorating. How could this be? After all, we have had over 35 years of civil rights laws passed by Congress including the Voting Rights Act of 1964, 1968, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, as well as federal law mandating affirmative action programs. These programs have in part helped create the viable Black middle class we have today. Why then, in the midst of the greatest increase of Black affluence in American history, has poverty and crime exploded to such an extent in our major cities that sociologists have coined a new term to describe the intractable Black poor?–“the Underclass”.
Before we attempt to answer this question, people should ask the question: How should Blacks have responded to White racism, segregation, discrimination suffered by them in the early twentieth century? And upon which philosophy should Black people have relied to help them overcome these problems? The conventional wisdom espoused by the Black elite of the liberal left would have you believe that the civil rights movement grew out of a philosophical war between Du Bois and Washington.
These two men whose diametrically opposing strategies, sought to help Blacks receive equal treatment under the law. To Black liberals, Du Boiss philosophy was said to have prevailed over Washingtons as being a more feasible and effective way to combat racism. It must be noted however, that Du Boiss philosophy was born and developed not in the minds of Blacks, but by White liberals of the academy (mostly Jewish) and systematically fashioned to comply with a cultural relativist mind set then dominating most academic disciplines at that time.
The grass-roots people who are imperative to any social movement, had little to do with the origins of the modern civil rights movement. As we shall later see, this fissure between the Black elite and the common people would prove to be a devastating mistake that severely impeded the socio-economic progress of Black people in America, even until this present time.
The dichotomy between Du Bois and Washington would be that of expediency versus patience; political protest verses self-help; overt activism in the streets verses the quiet assiduousness of personal and moral development in the home; seeking redress of rights in the courts of America for better jobs, schools and educational opportunities versus seeking knowledge in the libraries of America and creating our own jobs, schools, and educational opportunities; forcing Whites to accept us as equals verses showing Whites that we can first treat each other as equals. Such were (and presently are) the choices Black America must choose.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, by choosing Du Bois (the seemingly easy choice; requiring less personal capital) Black people entered a Faustian bargain with the devil which has led them down the road of frustration and pathology. Ninety years after Du Bois and other Whites founded the NAACP in 1909, Blacks are still paying for the sins of their forefathers by following the leadership of Du Bois over that of Washington.
The civil rights movement, with its well-known lineage of civil rights groups–National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) (founded by Martin Luther King, Jr.), Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Black Urban League, et al.–enthusiastically embraced the Du Bois model of activism, overt protest, and redress of civil rights violations in the courts.
Has this strategy proved most beneficial to Blacks? What have Black people gained after fifty years of civil rights activism? What have Black people lost from the time wasted marching in the streets and litigating in the courts? How much further socially, politically, economically, intellectually, spiritually, would Blacks have gotten had they marched, shouted, and protested less and studied, self-examined, and self-denied more? Wouldnt the short-term symbolic victories achieved by the NAACP, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X be eclipsed by the growing of their own institutional structures over the long-term? The true substantive benefits achieved of, by and through your own efforts could not be later taken away by legislative fiat. This is the exact dilemma of government dependency Black people are witnessing today regarding affirmative action and welfare benefits. Our leaders are not telling their people–what the government giveth, the government can taketh away.
Today, the name of Booker T. Washington, where it is even mentioned at all, is venerated only by two groups of African Americans: conservative Blacks (i.e., Walter Williams, Thomas Sowell, Justice Clarence Thomas, et al.,) and Black Nationalists (i.e., Louis Farrakan and his “Nation of Islam”). Afrocentrist, Molefi Asante, one of the few leftist crediting Washingtons positive influence stated: “Im not one of those people who is down on Washington,” he continues, “I remind you that Washington was a hero for Marcus Garvey.”
Unfortunately, Booker T. Washington today is viewed as miscarriage of history by the mainstream liberal civil rights groups and Black scholars. He is summarily dismissed and disdained as a caricature figure–a buffoon, not respected as a serious Black leader. Historian Alphonso Pinkney views him as a traitor and “collaborator”; for Martin Kilson, he is a “client or puppet figure.” Washington biographer, Louis Harlan is contemptuous and severely critical of his subject, while Du Boiss mythical status is preserved in a recent book by biographer, David Levering.
Why does Washington receive such acrimony by Black historians while his contemporary, Du Bois, is raised to legendary status? One reason for this biased assessment is that the majority of the so-called “Black elite” (i.e., the civil rights leaders, politicians, ministers, teachers, professors, lawyers, et al.,) are generally, philosophically egalitarian and politically liberal. Du Bois, who was one of the founding members of one of the first civil rights group– the NAACP, mirrored the intellectual assumptions