Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Booker T: Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil

Booker T Waswhington offers a logical and practical recipe concerning the institution of slavery. He also offers advice for blacks and whites alike in its aftermath. His advice is based in the hypothesis that humans are inherently good. Over time, what is morally right will match what is economically right. I think time has proven him wrong, yet I sincerely admire his resolve that mankind is defined as kind men.

He sets the stage in Up from Slavery by issuing a free pass to those whom benefited by slavery. Of his white father, he declares he knows nothing. Yet, he describes him as "another unfortunate victim of the institution..." What do you think? Is that an appropriate description of a deadbeat? Oh, poor victim!

More free passes are issued as Booker T. describes slavery as something that generated its own force: "I pity from the bottom of my heart any ....people that [are] so unfortunate to get entangled in the net of slavery.......[h]aving once got its tentacles fastened".


Slavery (slav-er-y)

noun

1) An uncontrollable monster with tentacles, for which nobody is responsible, adversely affecting all without prejudice

2) Conditions involving control of a person against his/her will enforced by violence and/or other clear forms of coercion.

Shall we take a poll?


I understand Booker T. had to address slavery in order to set the stage, but did he need to go so far as to describe the benefits the black man enjoyed as a result of slavery? "Negroes....who went through the school of American slavery are in a stronger, more hopeful condition [than other blacks]." Similarly, victims of cancer are now better educated on nutrition. This is a fact, but is it not insignificant? God's hand at work? "Providence so often uses....institutions (like slavery?) to accomplish a purpose."


Walking a tightwire in a naive attempt to have his readers forget about the past and consider the future, Booker T. sums up his thoughts nicely in the Atlanta Exposition Address: "[We should not] permit our grievences to overshadow our opportunities". Not such a jagged pill. That's all he really needed to say.

Booker T. goes on to make the argument that, given time, society will make the right choices regarding race relations, as equality is in the best interest of all, even the more powerful. "There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all", The efforts of powerful Southerners to advance the Negro cause "will pay a thousand percent interest". Powerful Southerners can't help but have their ears perk up at the sound of high interest.

This advancement cannot be forced by law, says Booker. "Progress.....must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing". Again, Booker T. shows too much faith in man's intelligence. Reality is depicted in the photo to the left, taken 63 years after the Atlanta Exposition Address. Fast-forward Booker T. to 1958. Does he still believe in a "willing obedience among all classes to the mandates of law"?
Perhaps Booker T. should have prefaced his Up from Slavery with, what instead, were his closing remarks of Chapter XIV. It is there that Booker T. proposes an intelligence test as voting criteria. If you are too stupid to realize that racism is destructive to all, then you don't get to vote. Now, if this were his opening, then it would be easier for the reader to accept his perspective as something intelligent rather than a hopeful fairy-tale. If the voting booths were so protected, the outcome may very well have been that Black culture was expeditiously assimilated and/or accepted by mainstream Southern white society. Now, however, what to do with all the idiots who have no political power and find themselves in a vicious cycle of poverty and oppression. From that world comes the famous quote, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the quality of their dental work, but by the content of their character". Racism replaced by class warfare.

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