I've been (slowly) making my way through this Booker T. Washington biography. It really is a great read. But that aside, I think that it also highlights a great tragedy in race relations in this country. Washington is arguably the most effective and powerful black conservative in this country's history. (I maintain that Malcolm X was, for much of his public life, a black conservative.) Unlike today, Washington lived in a time when there actually was a credible black conservative tradition. Washington's "Atlanta Compromise" is remembered as a betrayal and a sell-out because it accepted segregation, and argued against black political agitation. But in fact, at the time, the response from black America to the "Compromise" was at worst mixed, and at best quite positive. No less than W.E.B. Du Bois called the speech, "the basis for a real settlement between whites and black in the South."
It makes sense, when you think about it. Washington basically said to the white South in 1895. "You win. We don't want the right the vote. We just want to till our farms, better ourselves, and be left alone. Leave us in peace, and you'll here no more of this voting or integration business." You have to remember the state of mind of black people, at that time. Reconstruction had been rolled back. The South was wracked by race riots. Three years after Washington's speech, the only coup in American history was orchestrated in Wilmington, North Carolina by racist thugs. Washington was basically conceding what he'd already lost. In return he hoped to simply secure the right of good Christian blacks to work the land in peace.
The dominant logic of the post-Reconstruction era held that the real problem wasn't white racists, but carpetbaggers and meddlers from up North who'd elevated illiterate blacks above their station. The white Southerner, presumably, had no existential objection to blacks, they just didn't want to live next door to them or have an illiterate and morally degenerate population electing their politicians. To this Washington, and much of black America, said Fine. Cease fire. You let us be, we'll let you be.
In retrospect, this was a grievous error. In point of fact, whites actually did have an existential objection to black people. Their beef wasn't that illiterates and moral degenerates might get too much power. Quite the opposite. Their beef was that blacks would prove to not be illiterates and moral degenerates, and thus fully able to compete with them. To see this point illustrated, one need only look at the history of race riots in the South. When white mobs set upon black communities they didn't simply burn down the "morally degenerate" portions--they attacked the South's burgeoning black middle and working class and its institutions. They went for the churches, the schools and the businesses. It's one thing to be opposed to black amorality. It's quite another to be opposed to black progress. The lesson blacks took post-Atlanta Compromise was that whites had used the former to cover for the latter. These days, it's popular to bemoan the fact that Washington has fallen into disfavor. But it wasn't blacks who proved the Atlanta Compromise fraudulent--it was the whites of that era.
You must understand the chilling effect this had to have on black people. To actually concede to all the racist propaganda out there, and then to be rewarded by hooligans burning down your community must have been psychologically devastating. People wondering why the GOP can't get a foothold in the black community, need to not just think about Goldwater and Nixon. They should think about Du Bois telling black men to go fight in The Great War, and then having those veterans come home to the Red Summer of 1919. They should think about the pogroms that greeted Booker T's compromise. There's a lot of hurt out there. A lot of ancient hurt. A lot of it, even in these times, quite deep.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
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What do you mean when you say "the only coup in American history was orchestrated in Wilmington, North Carolina by racist thugs." There were numerous coups in the South during that time. Pretty much the entire "Redemption" movement can be classified as a coup.
thanks for bringing this topic up. As an American I think it is important to have this kind of conversation. As a historian, i am excited that you are recommending well-written scholarly biographies!!! (ok i'm a nerd).
I think your phrase, there's a lot of ancient hurt out there, sometimes quite deep, exemplifies an important feeling in this country. The main question that I have is, what can i do about it? As a white woman with young kids, I try hard to give an example of open, equitable and genuine behavior towards one and all, but the reality of the situation is that, outside of my efforts within my family, where is there a chance to reach out to the wider community? Outside of my standing against racism in the small ways available to me in my daily life, where do I go from here? I doubt that anyone wants me to come and "minister" to them. Joining the NAACP doesn't sound particularly useful. Where does a well-meaning white person go from here?
I wish I had a simple step-by-step answer for your question but I don't. I know that I personally like to see people call their relatives/friends/neighbors on their b-s. And you needn't be confrontational. A simple, "why do you say/think that?" is usually enough to make the person realize that a) you do not blindly adhere to the same beliefs they have and b) they need to shut up or change the subject. This may not change a single bigoted mind but it will stop people from saying things you don't like in your presence. And at least this one black person will be glad you did.
Have you read "The Race Beat"? That is a phenomenal book and its primary subjects are white reporters who covered the civil rights movement.
it is the same stuff you do to help out in any community. look at your skill set and try to apply some of that to helping out -- if you want to be an ally to black people, apply your skills in the black community. tutor in an afterschool program that serves black students, seek out and buy from black businesses, blog to raise awareness about issues that affect the black community (like spreading word about missing children alerts). even just going to some black cultural events this summer (fairs, festivals, parades, etc.) and learning about the people living in your community (or larger city)can improve your awareness, which helps you identify places that look for volunteers like churches and community groups. stuff like that.
If the cause of anti-racism is important to you, I think that you should do whatever you would do to be active in any other cause that is important to you. Whether that means joining a service group or phoning your congressman or going to demonstrations, whatever happens to be your cup of tea.
The world is full of well-meaning people of all kinds. So long as you put your shoulder to the wheel in some way that suits you, I don't think anyone can ask more. In my opinion, it's really not about making amends for past wrongs-- at least not on an individual level -- it's about figuring out how to cure the practical legacies that exist now because of what was done. Since there are many legacies of systematic terror and discrimination, there's plenty to do. Name a social ill, any social ill, and black people suffer from it disproportionately.
depending on the kind of town you're in... maybe there's a choice of what scout troop to put your kids in, or what swimming pool to get their lessons at. Little League, Pee-Wee Football, community theater, church choir, community gardens, quilting club. If there's any sizable black community nearby, there'll be tons of groups with mostly black membership where you and your kids can have fun, do/learn something useful, and get to know new people all at the same time.
Ahh, the South. I remember telling a friend back during the height of the Iraq War that Americans were doing so poorly there because they didn't understand their history.
The insurgents were no different from the Klan and other White Southerners after the end of the Civil War. The South is rebel territory. It is the break away republic. How could the Republican party, ostensibly the party of the South, fail so miserably in the aftermath of the invasion when the South so effectively subverted the North's attempt to govern the region?
So successful was the South post civil war that one could argue that though defeated, it took another 140+ years until the election of Barack Obama until the region's control on the US presidential politics could be somewhat mitigated.
Great point about targeting the black working and middle class. I strongly suspect this has a lot to do with how things are today; it seems that implicitly, if not explicitly, the message the country sends is that the only ways for young black people to achieve economic success are 1)through extreme luck; 2)Drug dealing; 3)Athletics.
And that's why the conservative notion of America as a meritocracy and of "personal responsibility" will never succeed with most of black america. It's just not reality.
I doubt that "never succeed" is accurate. Maybe, not in the very near future, but even now there is a subset of black America that share the personal responsibility/meritocracy worldview, based on how they feel they achieved success in their own lives. It would seem that the coming off as so racist and condecending, many of them will line up them eventually.
like my man nas said:
American blacks the teenager of this world
Give us twenty more years to grow up
Already geniuses;
Well I think its very conditional whether it will succeed, but you're right, I did misspeak. Obviously Obama's presidency could have a lot to do with it.
That being said, I think the idea of America as a meritocracy is failing among all races. Look at the economic collapse; people of all races who did the right thing by putting their money in 401ks, bought houses at fair rates, etc. got screwed. This happened in large part due to a priviledged, mostly white, group of people getting greedy. Not to diminish the contribution that a materialistic culture that spanned across all races and classes at all.
Black people are just more likely to deal with more issues that are, simply, unfair. Look at police brutality for example; it happens to white people, but not nearly as much as black people. Economically, look at pay-day advances--sure Jackson Hewitt and H and R Block use them, but they are all over the place in low income communities.
It just seems minorities are more exposed to negative sides of many conservative beliefs; i.e. a free market economy or toughness on crime. However, due to the biases of the ruling class bailouts are not "welfare" and "toughness" is not brutality and mandatory sentencing for non-violent drug offenders.
Granted, I'm saying this as a liberal, and I don't mean to diminish the value of hardwork. God knows, most successful people have worked their heart out for a good portion of their life, and deserve what the get. I just think that we live in an era that has debunked traditionally conservative ideas, and that it seems that minorities, especially blacks, were way ahead of the curve on feeling the results of those failures.
lebecka, your statement "I try hard to give an example of open, equitable and genuine behavior towards one and all" is all you have to do. Thanks for really caring to do the morally right thing for all people. Thank you.
I think it's really quite interesting to think of the post-reconstruction white backlash as "betrayal." Part of me just can't quite believe that black folks didn't expect to be dogged and hunted in addition to being separated and discriminated against. But it very well might have seemed so to those living in that era. I suppose, it may have taken the violent terrorism of that time to make black people understand that their white countrymen really did see them as an existential threat and not as a population with some undesirable elements. A part of me is skeptical, though. I feel David Walker was pretty clear about the reality of white existential identity threat in his 1829 anti-slavery manifesto The Appeal. The main point of which was that the persistence of chattel slavery was evidence that white "owners" didn't think black "slaves" were human and so the prospects for negotiation were next to nil. Who negotiates with beings not only below their station, but their species? But of course, Walker did not necessarily represent the commonplace assumptions of the time. He was a radical, after all.
Still, from this vantage, it is really hard for me to understand how Washington et al. could have believed that they would be left alone to prosper. The idea seems incredibly naive regardless of the obfuscating political rhetoric of the day.
Then again, that great skepticism, may be the result of that moment of "betrayal" being socially encoded into what became a commonplace black worldview, which takes as a given that black people may be allowed to prosper as individuals, but will never be allowed to prosper as a people. Not without a great engagement with the wider politics, colossal effort of individuals and institutions and persistent, indeed tireless, demand.
I was a high school teacher at a small urban high school and DanW's comment is exactly what we spent our time thinking about:
"it seems that implicitly, if not explicitly, the message the country sends is that the only ways for young black people to achieve economic success are 1)through extreme luck; 2)Drug dealing; 3)Athletics."
We kept sending black kids to college. But, we hadn't been doing it long enough for any of our graduates to have really 'made it' so didn't have a lot to offer as "look, these folks were just like you a few years ago."
What we promoted though was that hard work and discipline was the key to success. In many ways we sounded like Booker T. and we recognize that we act(ed) a bit naive because bad things still happen and it's hard to break free from a cycle of poverty.
But, what's also holding our young people back is a fear of leaving behind their family and friends. Ta-nehisi has written about this a bit, but learning how to negotiate different parts of our society (the white-sounding and acting one) doesn't mean that you automatically lose all connection to your previous one, but it's difficult for a teenager to see this.
Thus, those first steps are terrifying because you're stepping into a community that makes little sense and, at the same time, you're stepping away from your families' ability to support you.
So, what we saw is a good number of our very good students either choosing 'safe' schools that were local but not challenging academically, or, going away and dropping out after a semester...
I think I understand Washington's hope, and maybe it was a bit delusional all at the same time. But, I feel like if we can just get a critical mass we'll be okay... and maybe that's where he was too.
Sadly, there remain institutional reasons for black kids not going to college as well. When I was in high school, I took a civics class that was minority dominated. One of the very bright black students, during a discussion of college and the school's counselors, mentioned that her counselor had told her flat out "You're not college material." I was absolutely gob-smacked that someone whose job is to help students get the most out of school and plan their careers would be so blatantly dismissive. And this wasn't some rural town in the south. This was a relatively big, urban high school in Seattle.
I think its incredibly ironic that Booker T, who I agree may be the best example of Black Conservatism in our American history, was a launching pad for so many Black radical movements--the UNIA, the NOI, the Moors, the Rastafari, etc.
One reason is because, unlike many contemporary Black Cons, he was not ambiguous about or openly hostile to the Black working class. Everything he did was in service to a cautious chess match to protect a recently freed community of slave laborers who needed to be groomed for the Industrial Age under extremely hostile conditions.
As much as Dubois and the Niagra / NAACP boys extolled the race in abstract terms, they didnt seem very comfortable out of their Black Bourgeois comfort zone, or engaging Black issues outside of the academy or the courtroom. Booker T on the other hand could be found right out there in the hot sweltering, buzzing fields with his students and with brilliant agrarian minds like George Washington Carver, laying down the foundation for the movement. And he was the first one to extend hospitalities to a radical young labor activist from Jamaica, Marcus Garvey, without reservation--unlike Dubois, sad to say.
Sometimes one's big picture commitments do not confine themselves easily to facile, superficial controversies and categories. You gotta have some game, some pivot, some flex to roll with the circumstances...thats how a Booker T leads to Garvey, a Garvey to a Malcolm X, and Malcolm X to a Huey Newton in a bright, direct line.
"In point of fact, whites actually did have an existential objection to black people. Their beef wasn't that illiterates and moral degenerates might get too much power. Quite the opposite. Their beef was that blacks would prove to not be illiterates and moral degenerates, and thus fully able to compete with them."
This may have been the view of many (or perhaps most) southern whites, but discriminatory policies against blacks also placed a burden on some southern white business owners, who objected to segregation because it hurt their bottom lines. See, for example, “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars.”" (scroll down to the coffee-colored excerpt).
"People wondering why the GOP can't get a foothold in the black community, need to not just think about Goldwater and Nixon. They should think about Du Bois telling black men to go fight in The Great War, and then having those veterans come home to the Red Summer of 1919."
I get your point about the lost opportunity presented by Booker T's conservatism, but it's worth remembering a few things about that time period. First, the GOP already had the black vote in the early part of the 20th Century, so, to some extent, it probably took the black vote for granted (the black vote also was probably a lot smaller then, because blacks were still being prevented from voting in parts of the South). Second, you are talking about atrocities that happened in the South, which, at the time, was under the political control of the Democratic Party. And the Great War was a war launched by a Democratic President. Third, when the Democratic Party first started winning black votes, under FDR, it didn't do so by appealing to the ideals of Booker T, or even by taking on the segregationists in its own party. It did so through federal anti-poverty programs.
The lesson one could draw from that is that the GOP ought to offer more government aid to lower income people, in order to get more lower income whites, blacks, and others to vote for the party. To some extent, that's your former colleague Ross Douthat's position (admittedly, an oversimplification of it), and to some extent it's what George W. Bush tried to do (for example, through his embrace of the EITC, and his zeal to increase minority home ownership rates, etc.). In my opinion, that would be the wrong lesson for the GOP to draw from that history, and the wrong tack to take going forward. A better tack would be to enact policies that would help lead to the creation of more high-paying blue collar jobs. There are a number of areas where current Democratic policies work against this, and if the GOP were smart it could make an economic pitch here. Booker T-style ideals could flourish in an African American community where there was a core of high-paying blue collar jobs as an economic base.
Was going to comment that the Booker Washington approach was in fact 'conservative' in the sense that AndrewSullivan would recognize and that the failure (in a Republican era) of this approach led to the NAACP, Niagra movement and WEB DuBois. But that ground has been covered above.
The second and smaller comment I had was this: that real changes from the status quo that Booker Washington accepted had to wait for the 'Great Migration' from the south to the cities of the north that was a feature of the New Deal and WW2. When blacks had the 'immigrant experience', their response was the same as other immigrant groups--a new and cohesive community that elevated itself.
"When blacks had the 'immigrant experience', their response was the same as other immigrant groups--a new and cohesive community that elevated itself."
Was it the 'immigrant experience' or the good-paying manufacturing jobs in the Northern cities that helped black communities elevate themselves?
There's also a difference between the experience of early 20th century European immigrants (e.g., Italians, Jews, etc.) and the "great migrants". Those European immigrants flocked to textile mill and factory jobs in places like New York, and were able to economically advance after those jobs went away. The African American communities in cities such as Detroit and Camden fell into decline when the industrial jobs in those cities started to go away.
That's a really good point on comparing the conservatism of Washington to Sullivan. It makes me wonder why Sullivan hasn't realized why his hope to pass gay rights through legislation is so flawed. Of course civil rights would be nice to pass with a popular majority, but it didn't happen that way with for African-Americans, and I doubt it will for gays considering many people still believe sexuality is a choice. It takes smart, courageous justices to bring that Equal Protection Clause into the argument.
Good post on Washington. You bringing up the past and why it's important is something whole swaths of White folks - I'd say the overwhelming majority, just simply don't want to deal with in any seriousness. History is ok to study, unless it's the history of Black folk in America.
But, you keep on bringing up these points of history, Coates. Thanks.