Who is the greatest African American of the past hundred years? Who was the most prophetic about civil rights concerns for the twenty-first century? Not Martin Luther King. I would have to rank him second or third. The greatest and most prophetic figure was Booker T. Washington. To see why, we have to revisit an early twentieth-century debate between Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Although the debate focused on black Americans, it is relevant to the question of how any group starting out at the bottom can advance in society.
DuBois, a distinguished scholar and co-founder of the civil rights organization NAACP, argued that blacks in America face one big problem, and it is racism. Washington, who was born a slave but went on to become head of the Tuskegee Institute, countered that blacks face two big problems. One is racism, he conceded. The other, he said, is African American cultural disadvantage. Washington contended that black crime rates were too high, black savings rates were too low, there were too many broken families, blacks did not have enough respect for educational achievement, and so on.
DuBois insisted that these problems, if they existed, were due to the legacy of slavery and racism. Washington did not entirely disagree, but he insisted that, whatever their source, these cultural problems demanded attention. What is the point of having rights, Washington said, without the ability to exercise those rights and compete effectively with other groups? To put the matter in contemporary terms, there is little benefit in having a right to a job at Microsoft if you don't have the skills to get and perform the job. Washington further implied that if these cultural deficiencies were not remedied, they would help to strengthen racism by giving it an empirical foundation.
The civil rights movement, led by the NAACP and later Martin Luther King, fought for decades to implement the DuBois program and secure basic rights for black Americans. This was a necessary campaign, and ultimately it was successful. The laws were changed, and blacks achieved their goal of legal equality and full citizenship. Other minorities (and I count myself in this group) also benefited from the doors that King and his fellow activists opened. Obviously issues of enforcement remain, but by the late 1960s the early civil rights agenda represented by DuBois and King had been largely achieved. At this crucial juncture, the civil rights movement should have moved to embrace the Booker T. Washington agenda.
Unfortunately this didn't happen. It still hasn't happened. Even today Jesse Jackson and the NAACP continue (in the famous words of Frederick Douglass) to "agitate, agitate, agitate" for black progress. But now there are hardly any Bull Connors and Southern segregationists to fight, and so the activists are reduced to fighting "covert racism" and "institutional racism" and "racism that has gone underground" and basically racism that is only visible to them and to no one else. Most significant, these fights do little to help the blacks who are the poorest, the group that sociologist William Julius Wilson termed "the truly disadvantaged."
Meanwhile, there is another group that is following the Booker T. Washington strategy, and that is the nonwhite immigrants. I don't just mean the Koreans and the Asian Indians; I also mean black immigrants--the West Indians, the Haitians, the Nigerians, and so on. All are darker in complexion than African Americans, and yet racism does not seem to stop them. The immigrants know that racism today is no longer systematic, it is episodic, and they are able to find ways to navigate around its obstacles. Even immigrants who start out at the very bottom have shown that they are make rapid gains. These groups are surging ahead of African Americans and claiming the American dream for themselves. West Indians, for instance, have established a strong business and professional community and have achieved income parity with whites.
How is this possible? The nonwhite immigrants don't spend a lot of time meditating about the hardships of the past, nor do they blame their circumstances on society. They recognize that education and entrepreneurship are the fastest ladders to success in America. They push their children to study, so that they will be admitted to Berkeley and MIT, and they pool their resources and set up small businesses, so that they can make some money and move to the suburbs.
Thus we find that any group trying to move up in America is confronted with two possible strategies--the DuBois strategy and the Washington strategy---and it is an empirical question as to which one works better. A century ago, when segregation was still the rule, clearly the DuBois strategy was better. In this sense, Booker T. Washington was wrong during his day. But today it's clear that the man was ahead of his time. So far the evidence is overwhelming that the immigrant approach of assimilating to the cultural strategies of success is vastly better for group uplift than the tired old strategy of "agitate, agitate, agitate."
Martin Luther King nobly led the first phase of the struggle, but he only dimly saw the next stage. At the time of his death King was peddling all kinds of impractical schemes for sharing the wealth and he also became unnecessarily involved in the anti-Vietnam movement which diluted his currency as a civil rights leader. Even so, there were moments when King was prescient about the future. At one point he said that ultimately every man must write with his own hand the charter of his emancipation proclamation. I take him to mean that we all have the right to be treated equally under the law. We have this right, but we don't have any more rights than this. What we do with our rights, what we make of ourselves, the script that we write of our own lives, this finally is up to us.
Postscript: This article has been loosely adapted from my book What's So Great About America. The issues it raises are exhaustively treated in one of my earlier books, The End of Racism.
Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 40)
1. Dinesh,
My apologies. I will read your book. Sorry about my misunderstanding.
I believe that Martin Luther King was great because he was such a transformative figure whose ideas will last throughout history whereas Booker T. Washington was a man more of his time. For example, Washington encouraged black people to focus on trade schooling rather than higher education because of the opportunities available at that time. Though Washington was great in his own right, his ideas were very limiting for black people or any people in the long arch of history.
Skip: I have NEVER endorsed the Bell curve theory. Read my book "The End of Racism" for a challenge to that theory.
best, Dinesh D'Souza
Dinesh, I always discount your commentary on race because of your support for the Bell Curve theory that blacks were intellectually inferior to whites and other racial groups. Do you still believe that nonsense?
Skip
Skip at 4:18PM on Jan 23rd 2008
2. As previously commented Dinesh D'Souza has no real grasp on the history of African Americans in this country. Although his views on the value of Booker T. Washington are well taken and most certainly would be more than useful to African Americans today. The fact that other immigrants of color from mainland Africans to Vietnamese and all inbetween use a form of Washington's ideas means that immigrants come to this country from a world where if not they; people just like them succeed and make up the infrastructure of their societies. They come here and build on the shoulders of the African Americans who are aliens in their own country. they live, work and prosper in areas that they would have been arrested for walking in prior to the Civil Rights movement. There is also the prevailing attitude that as long as you are not African American you are better person. Similiar to Algerians in France, when African Americans were welcome there, Algerians (France's own exploited and colonized people)were not.
I don't know what the point of you article was.
Was it to further the schism between African Americans and other immigrants? To give vent to what you and most who are not African Americans grow up with? "Stay away from those Blacks, N...,
you are better than them. Well you did it, now what?
To say that racism is only seen by Jesse Jackson et.al, is ludicrous. Every immigrant especially of color has faced and still faces racism. The fact that many succeed does not mean there is no racism. Hispanics arrested, and castigated because people thought they were Muslims. D'oaulu dead!
Driving while Black, Property taxes raised to squeeze Blacks out, Black men convicted because the White jury thinks they "look mean", so therefore they could have done it and the list goes on.
One other thing.
Christendom has done everything it could to drag the name and meaning of Christ's life through the mud. The blood of the millions murdered in it's name is all over it's face.
True Christianity is practiced by a small but hardy minority,the words of the Bible have immense value and if followed would put an end to most if not all of the worlds problems.
edrita at 1:42PM on Jan 24th 2008
3. Let me try and explain this: When a race has suffered over a century of physical, mental, emotional and psychological discrimination... fed information from their birth till death, by the society that they are inferior beings... this information eventually becomes ingrained into his psyche on some level, as the truth. It affects every aspect of how he perceives himself and others... and although slavery is no more, we are still to this day being bombarded by images however subtle that black is ugly, evil and inferior. My dear friends, decades of racism scar the human psyche. It is not that blacks consciously believe that they are less than, but the subtle conditioned beliefs and behavior by both blacks and whites perpetuate the notion. Similarly, a child who endures physical or emotional abuse in his upbringing, will transmit those same behavior on to his own children unless he goes through some type of therapy to heal the mental and emotional wounds from the abuse. It's the same thing.... years of negativity against blacks have seeped into the conditioned mind creating the viscous cycle of learnt behavior.
"West Indians, for instance, have established a strong business and professional community and have achieved income parity with whites."
Dinesh, there is a huge cultural difference between West Indians and Black Americans and your attempt to compare the two shows a complete lack of understanding of the black experiences. While many black americans were still marching for equal rights and opportunities in the USA, in countries like Jamaica my father was able to go to University in England and become an Engineer. After our country's emancipation, black people in these islands had an immediate sense of belonging and ownership consequently, as a nation we were able to define ourselves without the white man's perception of who we were. In addition, we were being influenced by consciously uplifting musical artists like Burning Spear, Jimmy Cliff, Bob Marley etc. all of whom, helped to establish a deep sense of pride not from the color of our skin but from the integration of our culturally rich and diverse population. The Jamaican motto established after Independence is: "OUT OF MANY, ONE PEOPLE". From that, we understood, we were no longer different races but instead had immersed as ONE, a Jamaican.
The Black American experience was very different from that of a Jamaican therefore your comparison demonstrates a lack of understanding of the different human experiences that ultimately framed our perceptions
Bottom line is, unless you walk in another man's shoes, our greatest asset is to have an open mind as this often leads to compassion, understanding and ultimate transcendence.
i am.. at 1:36PM on Jan 24th 2008
4. HERE COMES AGE DISCRIMINATION . . .BUT!
When Oprah entered the stage on American TV she ran off at the mouth and said stuff like, Your mother is a terrible person (paraphrased) to a little 10-year-old boy whose mother was on the street using drugs. People wrote in and told Oprah that she didn't hurt the mother she hurt the kid and may have scarred him for life, even more.
When I first took notice of D'Souza he was young and fired-off insensibilities. I see he's still at it. WE HAVE TO WAIT FOR THESE PEOPLE TO GROW UP-- and it's a pain. It is truly a pain. But if Moyers and Will can get things in a better perspective, at least partially, then D'Souza just may too. If D'Souza ever uttered a word about dislodging the Civil Rights of 1964 then he is not only immature but unintelligent. The Civil Rights Movement FREED WOMEN, FREED CHILDREN, FREED OPPRESSED OTHERS AND EVEN FREED PETS. No one or anything is SUPPOSED TO BE oppressed, abused and misused in America today. Everything has rights. Some of the logic doesn't make sense like : kill thousands of former "pets" that people abandon and then put a young football star in jail for doing the same thing heinously to six. (We don't know the conditions the agencies put the animals to death; I'm thinking heinously, at least sometimes).
And, this version of thinking where only one thing is said to be responsible for our eventuality and arguing over which is first and which is second that's like saying a sentence occurs just because it has a verb in it and excuse the sense adjectives and pronouns and others active roles contribute to the sense in a sentence. What we live now, all of us, was affected by our entire American past. (We want Native Americans to pay for community colleges in Californa from their casino revenues; Native Americans were not even allowed to attend schools or were so discriminated against they didn't even want to go.) Some people were affected in this way, some in another way. We are getting on and on but there is no such thing as moving fast with such a heinous past as America has and will have again in the future. All this talk about other people coming into America and making headrows -- well, talk to them now after the subprime loan fiasco/piracy/usury.
YOU WANT AN EDUCATION . . . Type in "Tulsa, 1921" and read all about it. We have a thriving economy that is staggering; African Americans are making enrows and hoping to get on but they know the history; they expect the door to be knocked down at any time. NOW THAT'S THE POINT D'SOUZA, NOW THAT'S THE ENTIRE POINT! But . . . if you want to debate and argue over it; I'll concede this kind of memory and this kind of thinking in the African American community has created the current A.A. approach to life and times and accomplishing in America.
-- NOTICE: there are no stats to help form this vision. (How lazy!) Oh, there is no such thing, intelligently, as "race".
--Margaret Opine
margaret opine at 12:58PM on Jan 25th 2008
5. I have always been proud of my ethnicity, but last week I have really had to qurestion this. and here is why, We have been fighting all our lives for equal protections and rights. but last week I found out the Black community was by far the biggest athnic group to support Prop 8, so now you are going to say "well I believe in the bible and thats that, but I have to tell you this you have just voted 10% of blacks to the back of the bus. I have seen discrimination often as a black man, but try walking down the street holding someone of the same genders hand and its not dirty looks you get, it puts you in physical danger, and people have no problem yelling there oppinions at you. I have walked in both shoes that as a black man and a Gay man,right now as a black man I pretty much have full legal rights, but because I am Gay I now don't, the man I have been with for 16 years who is Mexican cannot get any rights to be legalized as my partner, he is still illegal because the court system will not recognize us as a couple, he has paid half the money for my house, and if anything happened to me he would get nothing, Civil Unions do not give you these kind of rights, as a gay we wanted civil unions to be equal but everyone apposed that, now with no recause we have tried to get the legal rights a married couple have which is marrige, and my own community where the loudest voice against it. I hope you are all proud. I never chose to be Gay who would? I got kicked out my home when my family found out. Now 10% of your own community are sitting on the back of the bus again like 1954, I cannot fight in the army, get married, sounds familliar right? Why couldn't you have just left it blank, as if to say I don't believe in same sex marriages, but I sure as hell am not to vote 10% of my own groups rights away to hurt people and take rights away, if you care about marriage so much go after diviorce, or is it true we are just a Homophobic minority?
Mark at 2:05AM on Nov 18th 2008
6. While I don't normally think DD's opinions are worth the online space they occupy--and while I find "ranking" civil rights heroes to be a dangerous game at best--I have to agree that Washington may be a more prophetic figure than some people have given him credit for. I encourage folks to read "Up From Slavery," if only to separate Washington's real arguments from DD's interpretation of them.
JD at 2:41PM on Jan 19th 2008
7. I can see why D'Souza would elevate Booker T. Washington above Martin Luther King- Washington was too much an accommodationist to the racism that permeated his America. King, on the other hand, fought tirelesly, and ultimately gave his life for a cause that D'Souza has oppsed- the end of the segregationist Jim Crow laws. D'Souza has called for the repeal of the Civil Right Act of 1964. Although he isn't old enough to remember the Jim Crow era, I am. I can well recall the "good old days" for which D'Souza is inexplicably nostalgic- the restaurant signs that said "Whites Only", the employment offices that said "No Colored Need Apply", the separate restrooms and drinking fountains, the back of the bus and theater balconies to which blacks were relegated- and a host of other racist practices, all of which would be once again legal if D'Souza got his wish. Fortunately, that will probably happen about the time I'm elected the next King of England. It is thoroughly hypocritical for D'Souza to now state that the passage of the civil rights laws was a "necessary campaign", when his writings have taken a completely different view. A return to an America in which Jim Crow is once again legal may be D'Souza's dream of the future. It isn't mine.
Ron Smith at 2:49PM on Jan 19th 2008
8. ATHEIST
As I said earlier, Dinesh isn't really a Catholic. He's an Agnostic.
Dinesh isn't willing to defend the CORE BELIEFS of Catholicism. He's rather talk about church history.
History is cool. Today's blog is also about history:
DINESH: Booker T. Washington, who was born a slave but went on to become head of the Tuskegee Institute, countered that
... black crime rates were too high,
black savings rates were too low, there were too many broken families,
**** blacks did not have enough respect for educational achievement *****
____________________
Any list that leaves off Oprah... well, Oprah may do a LOT more than either one before she's gone.
Dinesh, you've got to get MORE RESPECT for education.
Specifically, the FACT that we now understand that Demonic Possession does NOT exist.
You champion a book that describes Jesus as an exorcist.
Being an exorcist is one thing. But saying that demonic spirits obeyed Jesus... that's something else.
If the story is true, then Jesus was a CON MAN.
But the better answer is, the New Testament stories were made up AFTER Jesus died.... do not desscribe anything that actually happened.... and that the "exorcist" stories were simply a Sales Pitch to recruit new victims to a cult.
A cult based on the beliefs of the Pharisees:
resurrection of the dead at the end of the world
angels
spirits.
Until you acknowledge that education has PROVEN Catholicism to be a Sales Pitch for con men, you're falling into the same trap.
Sitting back and saying nothing is not the same thing as Honesty.
William Hays at 2:45PM on Jan 19th 2008
9. ATHEIST
reply to: I can well recall the "good old days" f- the restaurant signs that said "Whites Only", the employment offices that said "No Colored Need Apply", the separate restrooms and drinking fountains, the back of the bus and theater balconies to which blacks were relegated- and a host of other racist practices, all of which would be once again legal if D'Souza got his wish.
______________
No, I don't think so.
Once again, the contribution of "Oprah."
Oprah's on television every day. On most days, she has the most interesting program.
There's no going back. Oprah could use the power of television to place a spotlight on enyone who tried the stuff you're talking about.
William Hays at 3:02PM on Jan 19th 2008
10. Dude #2 comments above are interesting.
I am an athiest, and demons do exist...so does demonic possession, and JC WAS an exorcist.
I am a parapsychologist and ghost hunter. Never say never, guy. All things are possible. The thing is, how probable are they?
As for DD, his right-wing conservative views are mostly damaging to western culture and scientific endeavor. His kind spend so much time waiting for the End of the World that they are more of a burden to society than a contributor.
The Goddess Athena at 3:27PM on Jan 19th 2008
11. Dinesh:
Excellent article.
kulari94 at 3:28PM on Jan 19th 2008
12. Dinesh:
The racists' arguments back then to blacks was, what are you going to do with freedom? What are you going to do with these rights?
When blacks don't acquire or have the skills to compete (because of broken families, lack of savings, education, etc.), they unfortunately are only reinforcing the arguments of those who sought to deny them rights in the past.
kulari94 at 3:32PM on Jan 19th 2008
13. ATHEIST
Reply to: I am an athiest, and
&&& demons do exist...so does demonic possession,***
and JC WAS an exorcist. I am a parapsychologist and ghost hunter. Never say never, guy. All things are possible. The thing is, how probable are they? (end)
__________________
No, that's WRONG.
All things are NOT possible.
that's my MAJOR point here. The difference between a Con Game, and Reality.
A Con Game is based on FOOLING people. ie, like a statement that demons do exist.
There are thousands of dimwit Christians who thinks demons do exist. They never realize that there's a different group out there.... who think it is hilarious to see if people can be stupid enough to believe demons exist.
Not sure if your comment was serious... but it does demonstrate a serious problem.
People are gullible.
In order to sell books, sure, it's possible to PRETEND that ghosts and demons exist. People will LIE about it because that's how they put bread on the table.
You've got to learn how to say NO to lies and con men.
William Hays at 3:35PM on Jan 19th 2008
14. ATHEIST
Let me say it differently.
There are different subjects at college like Biology, Geology, Astronomy.
In those fields, there no advantage to LYING.
But when it comes to the Supernatural...
Ghosts
Demons
Exorcism
Crop Circles
UFO
... there's a HUGE reason to make stuff up.
(1) Just to see if anyone is gullible enough to believe it.
(2) so you can make a living as a ghost hunter.
If you don't take that into consideration, you're NOT going to find the correct answer.
The supernatural... is ALWAYS an Imaginary World.
I seriously doubt that the real Jesus was an Exorcist. The demon stories in the gospels weren't added until 40 years after Jesus died.
William Hays at 3:40PM on Jan 19th 2008
15. All right, I am going to comment on those who commented on my comment...:>)
Just because you have never seen a UFO or a demon does not mean that it does not exist.
True, Christians have set back Western Civilization two thousand years, and killed millions in the name of their religion in witch hunts, inquisitions, wars of religion...but that doesn't mean that the bible has no valid points whatsoever...
And I don't make my living as a parapsychologist. With the economy that it is today in America, most people are not making a decent living at anything.
The Goddess Athena at 3:50PM on Jan 19th 2008