The Leadership of W.E.B. Du Bois and the N.A.A.C.P.

The concept of leadership and more specifically racial leadership is similar to the concept of race itself: it is widely spoken of and is debated in many varying arenas, but a precise definition is rarely given. Leaders, it should be remembered, very seldom emerge prior to the movement which they then speak on behalf of. In the overwhelming majority of historical examples, it is the case that ‘leaders’, whether they be social, political, economic or cultural leaders, emerge from movements which they later go on to represent in some capacity.

If we consider this in relation to the life of W.E.B. Du Bois between 1899 and 1934[1], then it is plain to see that an analysis of the general feeling of the time must be conducted, in order to successfully characterise Du Bois’s “leadership” of African Americans[2]. In Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois concerns himself in the third chapter entirely with the leadership epistemology of Booker T. Washington, who at the time was the foremost African American contributor on the race issue. There is an underlying sense early on in “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” that a new style of leadership is urgently required -- one which is more representative of the African American community than the Washingtonian epistemology, which is commonly referred to as accomodationist today. Du Bois identifies tensions within the African American community which cannot be expressed or communicated to the larger American world; the tension exists because, according to Du Bois, there was never any whole-hearted support among African Americans for Booker T. Washington. As Du Bois noted, “it startled to hear a Negro advocating such a programme … it silenced if it did not convert the Negroes themselves.[3]” The silence, Du Bois argued, was doing untold damage to the plight of the African in America. One can only speculate as to the personal reasons why Du Bois went on in the coming years to speak on behalf of these people (and in opposition to Washington), but the fact that he did suggests that the development of his leadership grew out of a feeling of contempt for the status quo of the time.

Kilson (2000) outlines the theoretical differences between Washington’s leadership and Du Bois’s leadership: he classifies Washington as favouring a social organisation type leadership model and refers to Du Bois’s leadership as guidance type or mobilisation type leadership[4]. Kilson interprets Booker T.’s address to the 1895 Atlanta Exposition as a clear rejection of the mobilisation type leadership which would later characterise Du Bois’s leadership, and he is certainly right to do so. By insisting that citizens of the South of both races should “cast down [their] buckets where they are[5]” and stating that “in all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential[6]”, Washington devotes himself to the acceptance of the present conditions of the South and is happy to accept gradual progress.

Moore (2003) characterises Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech as being conclusive of Washington’s overall political ideology. Her observation that “Washington stress[ed] conservative themes about how blacks could use the [Atlanta] exposition to showcase their accomplishments rather than push for political rights[7]” underscores the lack of forethought in Washington’s stance. His concern was about showing what the black man had achieved in the past, in the belief that the white man would benevolently bestow full human and civil rights on both black men and women, without explicit political pressure from black America.

The power of the Tuskegee machine made it difficult if not wholly impossible for any other African American to challenge Washington’s accomodationist policy. As a result, without any contest Washington’s epistemology became the white status quo interpretation of the race problem from the African American point of view. In the period building up to the establishment of the Niagara Movement, which would lay the basis for the NAACP, Du Bois touches upon a frustration which marked the first decade of the new century: “usually … criticism has not found open expression.[8]”

What Washington failed to take into account was that by accepting the present social conditions of the South, he was asking the African American to remain a second class citizen for as long as the white race felt it necessary to ‘keep them in their place’, to use a popular phrase of the time. This fact did not escape the notice of Du Bois: “Mr. Washington’s programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races.[9]” When we therefore consider this explicit disfranchisement of the African American (especially in the South) in 1895, Washington’s speech to the Atlanta Exposition reads almost as a preface to the ruling in the U.S Supreme Court case of Plessy vs. Ferguson of 1896, which of course made segregation constitutional as long as facilities for both races were ‘separate but equal’.

Kilson neglects to suggest a reason as to why Washington so explicitly abandoned a mobilisation type leadership model, and why he so eagerly embraced a leadership style built around social organisation. His well-publicised involvement with white philanthropists is, I think, only one of the reasons. Another contributing factor can be found in Washington’s upbringing[10].

Booker T. Washington was born a slave, who, once freed by the Emancipation Proclamation, spent his life searching for an education. Naturally, he became principle of a new school at Tuskegee when the opportunity arose, and from there he sought to help people of his own race. He spent his life teaching essentially manual labour skills, believing they were the best skills to help African Americans prove their worth to white America. In short, Washington rose up from the lowest class (what in today’s society would be the working class), and I would suggest that this left him unable to envision a society where pure equality equated to an absolute meritocracy. To offer guidance, it is necessary to be able to see the road ahead and to see where you are going; Washington probably felt himself unable to offer such guidance because the United States at that time was not a classless meritocracy.

In contrast to this, the growth of W.E.B. Du Bois as a leader begins with him being brought up in the heart of New England, and enjoying privileges Washington could have only dreamed of when he was a slave child. His experiences in Massachusetts showed him in essence how good life could be, though not completely void of racial discrimination[11]. When he studied at Fisk University, however, he soon learned that some citizens could not live like he had done when growing up because of the colour of their skin. As a consequence, Du Bois was steered by his life experiences towards a guidance type or mobilisation type leadership model because of his class, and how his better than average upbringing meant little or nothing in the South, where his skin colour was the only thing that mattered to white America.

Nevertheless, the drawback for Du Bois was that he was an exception to most people of his race. As White notes: “Unlike Booker T. Washington, Du Bois always felt himself apart from the mass of Negroes and, for significant periods of his life was definitely out of step with orthodox black responses to such issues as socialism, Marxism, and Pan-Africanism.[12]” While Du Bois’s upbringing meant he had the power to vividly convey to them a distinctly better life, it also distanced him from them on the basis of intra-racial class politics. I would suggest that this is the primary reason for Du Bois holding the power to his leadership in his pen[13], and not in stirring orations, as Martin Luther King would become famous for.

In conjunction with this, it can be said that the ideological differences between Du Bois and Washington reflect the personal differences between the two men, and in particular their contrasting upbringings. Early on in his life, Du Bois erred on the side of protest rather than leaning towards accomodationism. As Moore explains: “[Du Bois] wrote stirring calls to arms against racial discrimination in local politics.[14]” Her observation that “Du Bois’s articles for the [New York] Globe reflected what would be the basis of his own philosophy in years to come.[15]” reinforces the idea that a protest movement against racial injustice had been building from as far back as the time of Du Bois’s birth in the 1860’s.

It is possible to read “Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others” as a Du Boisian manifesto. The style of the essay and the way it is written contributes to this, as Du Bois lists on three separate lines the three things Washington “distinctly asks that the black people give up, at least for the present[16]”; shortly after this, Du Bois lists, in the same way, three unsatisfactory things which have occurred as direct or indirect results of the Washingtonian policy; a triple paradox of Washington’s career is then listed by Du Bois not long after, and then Du Bois lists three things he demands: “Such men feel bound in conscience bound to ask of this nation three things:
1. The right to vote.
2. Civic equality.
3. The education of youth according to ability.[17]”
Du Bois does this so as to polarise himself as the direct opposite to Booker T. Washington. The polarisation is spelt out unmistakably to the reader.

Once Washington had passed away in 1915, the accomodationist leadership of African Americans was usurped as the mainstream ideology, though in truth it had begun to die away once the NAACP was born. With Washington’s death, no one stood up and continued to speak on behalf of black conservatives. The growth of Crisis, the journal of the NAACP under the editorship of Du Bois’ had been phenomenal. In November 1910 it had a circulation of 1,000 copies; less than twelve months later it was selling 16,000 copies a month[18]. The Tuskegee machine was finally breached by Du Bois’s charismatic and elegant editorials which stirred the black men who read them.

The philosophy which Crisis embodied stemmed from the Niagara Movement which came into being in July 1905. As General Secretary, Du Bois strongly insisted direct action was a political necessity if the African American race was going to achieve anything, any time soon. As Moore notes, “the focus of the Niagara Movement was to encourage action and open protest to challenge racism and discrimination.[19]” Five years later, Crisis -- the main organ of the NAACP -- was setting out with the same principles of the former movement, indicating only subtle changes in Du Bois’s leadership between 1905 and 1910.

With Crisis and the NAACP now front and centre with regard to the race problem in the United States, Du Bois was free to practice his mobilisation type leadership which would bridge the gap between Washington’s accomodationist leadership and Martin Luther King’s civil rights leadership. Indeed, many of the sentiments Du Bois expressed so forcefully would have not looked out of place in the 1960’s. His plainly spoken attacks on discrimination, lynchings and social disfranchisement elevated Crisis to new heights, as it grew into the best-known black journal in the United States[20]. It was more successful that the poorly-named The Moon, the journal of the Niagara Movement, for two main reasons: first, it had more substantial financial backing. The main characters of the Niagara Movement (John Hope, William Monroe Trotter, F.H.M. Murray et al) had been joined by people who left the Washington camp between 1905 and 1910 (Kelly Miller, Mary Church Terrell, Archibald Grimké[21]). The combination of the two groups into the amalgamation of the NAACP made for a more viable economic organisation.

The second reason was Du Bois’s editorship. His ability to simplify the racial issues made the journal popular among people of his own race, whilst at the same time it made white America sit up and take notice. As Paul Robeson put it: “We Negro students joined the NAACP which Dr. Du Bois helped to organise and build; we read religiously Crisis of which he was editor for so many years, and in which he wrote clearly, constructively and militantly on the complex problems of the American scene.[22]” Without such innovative militantism, the financial clout would not have been able to achieve as much. But with Du Bois at the helm, the journal practically paid for itself by the time of the Great War[23].

Education remained an important concept for Du Bois, and in 1920’s Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil he once more expressed its civilising qualities: “We would say, "No civilized state should have citizens too ignorant to participate in government," and this statement is but a step to the fact: that no state is civilized which has citizens too ignorant to help rule it.[24]” Du Bois’s emphasis on the importance of education was similar though not the same to Washington’s, as is mentioned in the next chapter. The difference, however, lies in Du Bois speaking of education as a stepping stone to political involvement and political inclusion, in a country where the black man had been hitherto exiled from the political arena.

Ultimately, however, a leader is not a leader unless he had men following him. The great tragedy of Du Bois’s time as editor of Crisis is that is influence failed to spread further than it did. He was almost always at odds with the NAACP executives, and when he very publicly resigned the editorship of the journal in 1934, in the hope that prominent African Americans would rally around him, he realised he had erred in not attempting to influence the organization more directly[25]. The power of his leadership was expressed in the presentation and clarification of issues from a certain point of view, but ultimately he had no direct say over NAACP policy. His intellectual capacity was never transformed into institutionalised social power through the organisation[26].

Notes

[1] These should be considered as rough bookends only
[2] That is not to say, however, that Du Bois spoke solely on behalf of African Americans. While Du Bois was, to a large degree, “muzzled” by white philanthropists (see chapter three), white liberals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were essential in the founding of the NAACP. Though no study has successfully characterised the role of white men in the formative years of the NAACP, it is sadly beyond the scope of this investigation to do so.
[3] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. [1903] 1994. p 26
[4] Kilson, Martin. “The Washington and Du Bois Paradigms Reconsidered.” Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science. 568. (March 2000): p 301-2
[5] Washington, Booker T. Up From Slavery. New York: Dover [1901] 1995. p 107
[6] Ibid. p 109
[7] Moore, Jacqueline M. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. London: S.R. Books. 2003. p 32
[8] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. p 27
[9] Ibid. p 30
[10] This might be a little exaggerated in Washington’s autobiography Up From Slavery. As Moore notes, he was probably not quite the country bumpkin he later portrayed himself to have been. (p23)
[11] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 40
[12] White, John. Black leadership in America: From Booker T. Washington to Jesse Jackson. London: Longman. 1990. p 70
[13] Yancy, Dorothy Couser. “William Edward Burghardt Du Bois’ Atlanta Years: The Human Side – A Study Based upon Oral Sources.” The Journal of Negro History. 63:1. (January 1978): p 65
[14] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 40
[15] Ibid. p 40
[16] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. p 30
[17] Ibid. p 32
[18] White, John. p 55
[19] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 78
[20] Ibid. p 85
[21] As listed in Moore, Jacqueline M. p 84
[22] Foner, Philip S. Ed. Paul Robeson Speaks: Writings, Speeches, Interviews, 1918-74. New York: Citadel Press [1978] 1987. p 474
[23] Moore, Jacqueline M. p 85
[24] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. New York: Prometheus Books. [1920] 2003. p 151
[25] Rudwick, Elliot M. “W.E.B. Du Bois in the Role of Crisis Editor.” The Journal of Negro History. 43:3. (July 1958): p 239
[26] Ibid. p 239

Education for the Uplift of a Race

When we think of education, we tend to envision the training of boys and girls in practical skills. These being kills which they might go on and use later in life, possibly forming the basis of a career. In this way, we think of education as “training for life”. Central to the educational paradigm of W.E.B. Du Bois, however, was the notion that education should be the training of life. It is my intention to demonstrate in the following pages how the Du Boisian epistemology of education was innovational, in particular when compared to that of his nemesis, Booker T. Washington. Furthermore, I hope to illustrate that, although the Du Boisian epistemology of education was constantly open and responsive to ever-changing historical and cultural needs[1] -- that despite this, the same clear principles ran throughout: the object of education, as Du Bois saw it, was always manhood; the ultimate goal was constantly the development of men. In particular, he sought to create men who could lead the persons of African origin towards to a more enlightened future.

Du Bois called these leading African Americans the ‘Talented Tenth’, a phrase he would substitute later in life and replace with ‘Guiding Hundredth’. The establishment of this guiding few, he argued, should be the principal concern, and should precede the establishment of industrial schools. Once it was in place, these men would be in a more appropriate position to establish adequate schooling for the ‘masses’.

For Du Bois, education was intertwined with culture, history, economic thought, and social & political philosophy; it was the most pressing problem confronting persons of African origin[2].

Du Bois’s ‘Talented Tenth’ theory has been the most divisive feature of his educational paradigm and has intrigued scholars for over a century now. “The Negro race,” it begins, “like all races, is going to be saved by its exceptional men.[3]” We can see from this that Du Bois believes the solution to the problem of education lies within the race itself. The majority of the most important work has to be carried out by the exceptionals from that race; there is only a limited amount white philanthropists can do. With this comes an implicit challenge to Booker T. Washington, who was closely acquainted with the likes of Rockefeller and Carnegie, whom Washington was able to talk into financially supporting Tuskegee and his other policies. Du Bois’s experience with white philanthropists was not so positive[4]. As the opening paragraph continues, it becomes all the more challenging towards Booker T. Washington’s political ideology and to his stance on education[5]. This should be considered very brave when one remembers Booker T. Washington edited the book in which “The Talented Tenth” appears.

With “The Talented Tenth,” Du Bois’s epistemology becomes directly polarised from Washington’s. By emphasising the need for the educating of African Americans to degree level and higher, he is laying the foundations for what we might call a ‘top-down’ model. “The Talented Tenth rises and pulls all that are worth the saving.[6]” The Washington epistemology of education was a ‘bottom-up’ model. It is paradoxical to suggest member of Washington’s Tuskegee Institute could achieve what Washington himself had by attending school there. Washington seemed only too happy to burn the bridges which had carried him to where he was by the turn of the century.

The criteria of what it is to be a part of the talented tenth is explicitly outlined in the essay. As we might expect, the first and most important criterion which has to be met is a college education, although Du Bois probably makes Frederick Douglass exempt from this due to his exceptional circumstances. By the dawn of the twentieth century, Du Bois was banging his fist on the table and demanding the higher education of competent African Americans: “the best and most capable of their youth must be schooled in the colleges and universities of the land.[7]” Du Bois was firmly of the opinion that universities were the only institutions capable of passing on the most important knowledge and culture. “No other invention will suffice,” he wrote, “not even trade and industrial schools.[8]” As Gilroy notes: “Du Bois’s image of the Black University is central to [his] argument. In opposition to Washington’s anti-academic emphasis on the technical, vocational, and practical, he defended the idea of higher learning both as a goal in itself and as the foundation upon which a new educational system must be constructed.[9]”

Furthermore, the ‘top-down’ model does not solely concern itself with education. Indeed, it brings with it the civilising force of pure culture -- something which could not be supplied by Washington’s epistemology. “Was there ever a nation on God’s fair earth civilised from the bottom upward? Never; it is, ever was and ever will be from the top downward that culture filters.[10]” Du Bois places education within his overall thought process, supplementing it with history and culture. This is something Booker T. Washington failed to do.

The second criterion which must be adhered to for one to be a part of the talented tenth centres upon members setting aside their personal goals and making private sacrifices, for the public good of African Americans as a race. This is the distinguishing factor between the talented tenth and the black bourgeois, and made it possible to be educated to degree level and be outside the talented tenth. While some academics have slipped into the habit of using “black middle class” and “talented tenth” interchangeably, the two terms have different connotations (though there can be a degree of overlap)[11].

The talented tenth’s relationship to white principals is a complex one and worthy of study. Du Bois points the finger of blame at the dominant race for casting the black man as a stereotypically lazy lay-about, whose life is mired in crime and decadent behaviour. “A silly nation has made them the rule,[12]” he declares. Du Bois makes it the mission of the talented tenth to prove that black men are, indeed, capable of achieving great goals. Du Bois himself is testament to the possibilities of success in black skin.

Yet instead of writing about his own achievements as exemplification of what African Americans could achieve, Du Bois instead highlighted the life and work of Coleridge-Taylor in Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. Forming the first half of “The immortal Child,” this retelling of one of the world’s most famous musicologists of his day is done so in a very Du Boisian way. And by that, I mean it emphasises the ‘Africanness’ of the man, without enforcing stereotypes. “Life to him was neither meat nor drink,” Du Bois tells, “it was creative flame; ideas, plans, melodies glowed within him.[13]”

The selection of someone involved with music should not be understated. In Souls of Black Folk, each chapter begins with bars of music, each one a separate sorrow song. Du Bois’s passion for this music comes out in the final chapter, in which he supplies some of the words to some of the bars. In his summary, Du Bois notes that “the music is far more ancient that the words, and in it we can trace here and there signs of development.[14]” Seventeen years later, Du Bois is telling us about “the tempestuous outpouring of [Coleridge-Taylor’s] spiritual nature.[15]” Du Bois witnesses the (European) training of a man of African origin and he once again hears the texture and spirit of the sorrow songs -- only this time they have benefited from education.

Under the harshness of the institution of slavery, it goes without saying that musical education of any kind was unavailable to the enslaved. According to Du Bois, the wasting of talent and genius which existed then was still manifested in the American psyche in 1920. “We may well talk of the waste of wood and water, of food and fire,” he writes, “but the real and unforgivable waste of modern civilisation is the waste of ability and genius.[16]” Du Bois goes on point out that Coleridge-Taylor was educated in London, and that, sadly, he would most probably have not achieved what he did had he had the misfortune of growing up in the United States. In this way, Du Bois is able to make a strong case for the educating of all African Americans, while emphasising the lacklustre education (so affected by racial discrimination) offered to black people in 1920.

Once he is through reciting the life of Coleridge-Taylor, Du Bois deals briefly with education in a general sense. Nevertheless, his arguments remain the same: “this world has never taken the education of children seriously,[17]” he declares. More specifically, he acknowledges the benefits of education in the ‘modern world’, to use his phrase, but he also criticises it as possessing modern fallacies. He argues for several paragraphs that the monetary cost of education has become of greater importance than the concept of education itself. With the concept being nothing more than epiphenomenal in western society, Du Bois comes to the conclusion that “we have linked money and education inextricably. We assume that only the wealthy have a right to education.[18]” Du Bois draws upon common morals to assert that birth itself is the right to an education, and that money monetary concerns should be only auxiliary.

As has already been conveyed, “The Immortal Child” was published seventeen years after “The Talented Tenth” appeared in The Negro Problem, but prior to both of these Du Bois published “Of the Training of Black Men” in 1903’s Souls of Black Folk. This chapter varies from the two essays I have spoken of previously because it begins with old adages of the meaning of race, with undertones of educational depravity: “The … thought steaming from the death-ship and the curving river is the thought of the older South, -- the sincere and passionate belief that somewhere between men and cattle, God created a tertium quid†, and called it a Negro, -- a clownish, simple creature, at times even lovable within its limitations, but straightly foreordained to walk within the Veil.[19]” In a mocking sense, Du Bois stresses what many scientists seriously believed well into the twentieth century: persons of African descent were uneducated and uneducatable. Palaeontologist Fairfield Osborn, for example, assumed it to be obvious that inequalities of intelligence existed within the taxonomy of race[20]. Du Bois steps away from the concept of race quickly, and does not bother to argue this by citing the opinion of George Combe, who, in the midst of the nineteenth century, believed that “what was needed was a vigorous program of education.[21]”

Instead, Du Bois turns his essay into a synthesis of the two works he would write later on in his life; we can view this work as a foundation for what Du Bois would write later in his career. He details the (recently historical) educating of black men in the United States as follows: “The Negro colleges, hurriedly founded, were inadequately equipped, illogically distributed, and of varying efficiency and grade; the normal and high schools were doing little more than common-school work, and the common schools were training but a third of the children who ought to be in them, and training these too often poorly.[22]” Du Bois paints the picture of disorganised educational practices in shambolic institutions. The underlying interpretation of this passage is that this was so because of a lack of any talented tenth; had these men been educated first, and to the highest possible standard, then they would have been able to establish more efficient educational institutions and with greater logic and thought. Furthermore, it is likely more persons of African descent would have gone on to be educated at a higher level than just an industrial school.

At the turn of the century, many were questioning what was wrong with just educating black people solely with institutions like that of Tuskegee Institute. Again, Du Bois had an adequate response to these people with what he would write seventeen years later; without an education of the highest possible standard in classical music from the Royal Academy of Music, Samuel Coleridge-Taylor would not have evolved in to one of the world’s most respected musicologists. But in April 1903, all Du Bois could do was rely upon what he believed education should be: the training of life, and not training for life: “… we have a right to inquire … if after all the industrial school is the final and sufficient answer in the training of the Negro race: and to ask gently, but in all sincerity, the ever-recurring query of the ages, Is not life more than meat, and the body more than raiment?[23]”

Bibliography

Battle, Juan et al. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Talented Tenth: A Quantative Assessment.” Journal of Black Studies. 32:6. (July 2002): p 654 – 672.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil. 1920.

Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. New York: Dover. 1994.

Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth” from The Negro Problem: A Series of Articles by Representative Negroes of Today. 1903

Fitchue, M. Anthony. “Locke and Du Bois: Two Major Black Voices Muzzled by Philanthropic Organisations.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 14. (Winter 1996): p 111 – 116.

Gates, Henry Louis. The Future of Race.

Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. London: Verso. 1993.

Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America, New Edition. New York: Oxford University Press. 1997.

Rabaka, Reiland. “W.E.B. Du Bois’s Evolving Africana Philosophy of Education.” Journal of Black Studies. 33:4. (March 2003): p 399 – 449.

Notes

[1] Reiland, Rabaka, p 419
[2] Reiland, Rabaka, p 399
[3] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[4] For a good analysis of white philanthropic censorship, see Fitchue, M. Anthony. “Locke and Du Bois: Two Major Black Voices Muzzled by Philanthropic Organisations.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. 14. (Winter 1996): p 111 – 116.
[5] Gates, Henry Louis. The Future of Race. P 128
[6] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[7] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[8] Ibid.
[9] Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. P 121
[10] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[11] Battle, Juan. P 658
[12] Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Talented Tenth”
[13] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
[14] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 157
[15] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
[16] Ibid.
[17] Du Bois, W.E.B. Darkwater: Voices from Within the Veil
[18] Ibid. † literally, third something; a third something of ambiguous status
[19] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 55
[20] Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America, New Edition. p 388
[21] Gossett, Thomas F. Race: The History of an Idea in America, New Edition. p 73
[22] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 58
[23] Du Bois, W.E.B. Souls of Black Folk. [1903] 1994, p 58

So The Time Has Come

The BBC reports this week that, from the beginning of the 2008 / 09 academic year, Britain's involvement in the slave trade is to be studied by all secondary pupils in England.

When I began university, I studied a core module in the first year called "Black Atlantic: Slavery and it's Legacies". The title, you may notice, is related to a book by Paul Gilroy, but that's not the point. I came out of the first lecture scared. I was not scared by the horrors of slavery (I guess the MTV generation has become passive to images and tales of gore and suffering), but what troubled me personally was that I had gone through my entire childhood without realising that Britain -- the country of which I had always considered myself but a loyal servant -- committed one of the most terrible crimes of modern civilisation. I knew of the Holocaust, which accounted for the deaths of millions of people because of their religion, but I knew not of fates worse than death bore out by African people over timescales of centuries instead of decades. I felt ignorant and out of touch with a passage of history so gruesome and wrong that I simply began to crave knowledge and understanding on a phenomenal and bewildering scale.

What hurt the most was the sudden realisation that slavery and the slave trade mattered. They mattered as early as the sixteenth century, and they still matter here in the twenty-first.

I studied my degree at the University of Liverpool John Moores: the streets I walked down to get to class were, and still are, named after the slave traders. Under the picture on the BBC web site, the caption reads: "pupils will be urged to look at the long term impacts of slavery". While this simply has to be the case if the learning is to be worthwhile, it is worth remembering that the legacies of slavery are not purely aesthetic in terms of the microcosm of Liverpool. As often as raindrops fall upon Liverpool the city tries to cleanse itself, yet it longs for a cleanliness which seems to forever be out of reach, as the raindrops come laced with the blood of the slaves. The same is true of Bristol. The same is true of London.

The only time I ever came close to touching upon the slave trade was in the sixth form at school, when I was studying A-level government & politics. We learnt of about thirty Supreme Court cases in a single one hour lesson. Dred Scott vs Sandford, 1857 passed by in a single sentence: "no slave could be a citizen of the United States" said the teacher. "Next one, Plessy vs Ferguson, 1897," he continued, "the legalisation of segregation in America. This was overturned in the 50's with the case Brown vs Board of Education." In about thirty seconds we covered the spine of African-American history with regard to the U.S. Supreme Court. I can't recall them being mentioned again in class, but I still remember thinking at the time: "slaves? Segregation? There's no connection there." Thankfully I did my reading and I did my research. Twelve months later, in my first year at university.

Until now, the neglect of the slave trade and slavery from the curriculum sticks out like a sore thumb. To not teach the slave trade and slavery and the legacies of both is to effectively deny that they happened.

There's currently a 'comment' up on the BBC web site simply saying the teaching of slavery should not be compulsory, made by Vic, UK. Hmmm. Should pupils learn the concept of equality? Are people of African descent equal to people of European descent? Should pupils learn that everyone should be judged by the content of their character and not by the colour of their skin? (I am assuming the answer is an unwavering 'yes', there). By making slavery compulsory it makes the civil rights movement easier to contextualise -- I find it hard to believe I read King's speech and discussed it in class without taking slavery and the slave trade into account whatsoever. The philosophy of Malcolm X is so misunderstood in high school history that schools won't touch it with a barge pole. On face value it's an angry black man shouting "the white man is the devil!" He shouts the white man is the devil because the white man enslaved the black man for three hundred years, and even though Lincoln "freed" the slaves in 1865, African-Americans were still not free when he (Malcolm X) was assassinated and were still second-class citizens then, 100 years after "freedom". Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it.

The election of Barack Obama to the White House will not put an end to racial prejudice, in the same way that racial prejudice did not begin with the slave trade. But the picture is a complex one: racial prejudice, the political career of Barack Obama, and the slave trade are all carefully interwoven. You can't learn about two of them without the third one. In between these three, of course, there are many more important factors which also cannot be ignored...

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Will Richard Wrights Please Make Themselves Known To Black Boy

This morning BBC Radio Four's Today programme reported that a Reach investigation concluded black boys needed more black role models within their own communities. (Read how the BBC website reported this here.)

What I think is needed is a wider range of people to look up to from a variety of fields. It is okay to have entertainers as role models. The number of rappers who openly glamorise gun crime is very small. Recently, some rappers have even rapped for peace and equality. In Brazil, the only tangible way to escape the slums is to become a professional footballer (football just happens to be enjoyable). Well, in Britain, while a lot of global rappers would like to believe that hip hop is the only way to escape the ghetto, this is not actually the case. Going to school, getting an education and getting a good job is the most viable way to make something of one's life. Role models are needed within the black community to make this appear to be the reality that it is.

Even back in Claude Brown's Harlem, there were local heroes, but they were most usually the biggest hustlers and the guys who could stake a viable claim to have killed the most men and had sex with the most women. But it is worth remembering that the places in question are Moss Side, Brixton &c. in the 21st Century and not Harlem in the 1930's. But the example of Claude Brown is an important one to bare in mind. The fact that he emphasised that crime was the only way out of poverty is a paradox because he made a success of his life through writing.

For the black middle classes to become more involved at a local level, I think the first step has to be taken on a national level with regard to this issue. People like Benjamin Zephaniah must first make themselves known nationally, then maybe something might happen at local levels in black communities throughout Britain.

As the authorities would like to believe:
There's a big town 'cross the whiskey line
And if we turn the right cards up
They make us boss the devil pays off
And them folks that are real hard up
They get their local hero
Somebody with the right style
They get their local hero
Somebody with just the right smile
(c) Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright.

Poverty Is A Poor Excuse For Violence

Poverty in Great Britain is not the same as poverty on a global scale. Relative poverty is not that bad: houses and flats in Peckham, Clapham, and South London, though not luxurious, are habitable. Regeneration is needed in these areas, but only because of the wealth of the surrounding areas. These areas are made to stand out because of the prosperity of the areas around them.

Turning to crime or gang/gun violence is the easy option for the youth who grow up these deprived areas. What is needed is to make the youth of these areas see that there are other options, and that turning to criminal activities (though the easiest option) is not the most sensible choice. Lashing out at the world because "my Dad left my Mum" or because "I never knew my Dad" is simply not acceptable. The conventional viewpoint maintains that a breakdown in the family structure results in the child becoming violent. This is not necessarily so!

July, 1981. Merseyside is gripped by fear as hundreds of black youths riot in Toxteth. For nine days, they burn down shops, attack innocent passers-by and fight with the police. More than 1,000 officers are injured as they battled against petrol bombs and paving stones.

In 1981, Toxteth was the most poverty-ridden area of Liverpool. It still is. It also happens to be 'the Black area' of Liverpool. Although it is still a rundown area, a lot has changed since the riots of 1981. The changes concern education. Educational initiatives have sprung up all over Liverpool, including the regeneration of Liverpool Community College, the creation of Toxteth TV, and more coloured students than ever before attending Liverpool John Moores University. Education is the key. Education is not impossible in poverty-scarred areas. It does not cost anything to read a book.

(It is perhaps necessary to address the notion of the ghetto at this point. There was in 1981, as there still is now, a desire to see these areas turned into fully-blown ghettos, where the gang leaders have the final say on issues of justice, what is right and wrong &c. in an area which is no longer policed by the authorities.)

What is described above is the hard option. After 1981, many of Toxteth's youth turned their back on violence for equality. They turned their back on the easy option of self-pitying drug dealing and gun crime. Toxteth is an example which should be learned from by those in Peckham and Clapham.

Hip hop needs to be looked at objectively. It is true that most rappers are rags-to-riches stories through this black artform, but their childhoods really were in ghettos. The inner city areas of Nottingham, Toxteth in Liverpool, Peckham in London -- these areas are not as bad as Compton, CA., or South Central Los Angeles, CA. We should be thankful Britain is not that bad. Rap has good qualities. It encourages black empowerment. My advice would be to take the energy from hip hop but shed the violence; use the energy constructively to assert oneself academically, and escape those who are less well educated -- escape those who are the violent ones.

Some take hip hop literally. This is illustrated by all the recent shootings in Peckham. The media suspects links to gang culture. They are probably right. But if Booker T. Washington can go from being born a slave to being one of Americas foremost black representatives in an era of strong white assertion, why can not the Peckham gang members go get a proper education, a decent job and a good family life in what is an era of racial equality relative to Booker T. Washington's day?

I'm not saying every Black Briton should adopt Booker T. Washington's conservative views; I am saying every Black Briton should do like he did so they can better assert liberal pro-black viewpoints and make a difference to the wider community (as well as make the community a richer one), rather than just going around killing each other in violence shrouded behind a veil of poverty.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright

Our Staff

I can't help but feel bad about how poor some of our weekend staff are. I feel part of their inability to work is my fault; I feel part of their inability is their fault; and I feel part of their inability is due to the failing of fundamental education to prepare them properly for the working world.

Firstly my fault. I've seen them making mistakes and I try and point them out as pleasantly as I can. I almost always manage that. I've seen them slacking around and being generally lazy and teenage-ish (if you know what I mean), but I've done little to help the situation. I did try to lead by example, but they simply aren't mature enough to recognize what I was doing. I watched them pricing last week, with white labels, wrong prices and putting them anywhere on the product. I told them once how to do it. But they didn't bother to change (in the end I changed the white labels in that gun). The only other way I stepped in was to tell one of them to not just throw the seed into the containers, but arrange it neatly. I feel bad about pointing things out like that because it seems straight forward common knowledge to me. I just think I could have done more though.

I feel partly responsible seeing as I trained one of them, but an incident last week makes me think I did everything right. He was putting a bag of compost through the till and didn't use the PLU codes and Andy walked past, and I happened to be standing in the vicinity. Andy asked him, "you know how to use the PLU codes, don't you?" and he said no. Andy told me to show him how to use the PLU codes. But I remember taking him outside when training him (even though Andy had already given him a tour of the garden centre). I showed him the bags of compost outside and telling him that if someone brought one of these bags to his till then he should use these codes in the book. I then took him to the till and showed him how to use the codes! I then gave him a demonstration!

Not only are they crippled by their inability to listen, but they have no work ethic what-so-ever. For the likes of you and I, and all the full-time staff, we have to work or we don't eat. But if they get fired, they still get food put on their tables by their Mums. They seriously need to read Booker T. Washington's book 'Up From Slavery'. They simply don't care if they do the job right because they don't have to care. It just isn't possible to survive in the working world with the same attitude that gets you through school. You just can't do it. The same can be said about university. In university, you have to listen to pass exams to get a degree. But above all, they don't understand the fundamental principle of interdisciplinarity. The grossest lack of such a skill was evident a few weeks back. I don't want to 'grass' on people, but if I have to I will. I saw her tearing one of her many voids off the top of the till and throwing it in the bin. I thought, "did I just see that?" so I stuck around. Two minutes later she did it again. It became painful to watch so I made a hasty exit. It just seems silly, illogical, stupid and wrong. I still can't believe she does that. It just seems sad that, in the end, most of it really is all her fault.

Yours, wherever you may be,
Daniel C. Wright