Economic Usefulness Of Blacks example essay topic

Equality by Differences The end of the Civil War marked the destruction of the institution of slavery and thus, at least officially, the equality of all races within America. However, people used to being either slaves or masters for many years simply do not change out of their former roles overnight. In the decades following the Civil War, the legacy of slavery was very apparent, as blacks struggled with both poverty and second-class citizen status. True equality had yet been achieved. Such was the aim of writers like W.E. B Dubois and Booker T. Washington, who sought to put both level the social, political, and economic playing fields for both blacks and whites. Although both Dubois and Washington had similar ends, they disagreed on the means.

Washington considered blacks' poverty the more basic problem, claiming that once blacks could establish themselves economically within society, recognition as political and cultural equals would follow. However, Dubois took the opposite stance by saying that the training of blacks for economic usefulness was no better than what had occurred during slavery, and that before all else, blacks as a race must assert their unique identity and cultural integrity. Booker T. Washington stressed in his article, "The Awakening of the Negro", the importance of blacks being able to economically support themselves. By proving themselves as productive members of society, blacks could win the approval of whites, and slowly but surely gain recognition as equals. No longer would blacks be considered a sub-human people, but a people that white people saw as worthy of respect and admiration.

By using their status as a free people to integrate themselves into the economic life of America, blacks could become the providers of many goods and necessities to whites. By becoming a vital cog in the economic machine, blacks could then become a social and political force that whites could no longer ignore or dismiss. This is the rationale for Washington as he stresses industrial training in his Tuskegee Institute: "we find that as every year we put into a Southern community colored men who can start a brick-yard, a sawmill, a tin-shop, or a printing-office, -- men who produce something that makes the white man partly dependent upon the Negro, instead of all the dependence being on the other side, -- a change takes place in the relations of the races". Dubois also desired a change in the relations of the races.

However, his opinions on how that change would be achieved differed significantly from Washington's. Dubois viewed many aspects of Washington's plan to integrate blacks into white society as "selling out". To Dubois, what was important was not necessarily economic self-sufficiency, but the long-awaited coming of self-consciousness and self-realization, after years of being nothing more than nameless commodities. To Dubois, it would not be enough for blacks to simply assimilate themselves into the white system, but blacks would have to assert their unique cultural, social, and political identity.

He writes in his 1897 article, "Strivings of the Negro People", that the black man, in order "to attain his place in the world, he must be himself, and not another". Their ancestral roots in Africa, their experiences under years of slavery, and their experiences out of slavery lead to a unique cultural and political perspective that develop into a race consciousness. Blacks as a race and nation must contribute their ideas, their views, and their culture to white America, benefiting the country as a whole and leading to a pattern of mutual enrichment. "The ideal of fostering the traits and talents of the Negro", says Dubois, is "in order that some day, on American soil, two world races may give each to each those characteristics which both so sadly lack". Washington agreed with Dubois on the fact that more than just the economic usefulness of blacks must be cultivated. Blacks should be taught more than just how to farm, use tools, and operate machinery, but should also be taught culture and morality.

Free blacks who were productive and nothing else would barely be a level up from slaves, if any level up at all. However, Washington argued that before blacks can become cultured, moral, and respectable persons within society, they must first be able to support themselves economically. For without that economic base, everything else will crumble. How can blacks assert themselves as equal and independent members of society when they cannot assure their own basic economic needs? Without food, shelter, and other material necessities, man becomes savage. Washington emphasizes that this is a condition that applies not only to blacks, but people of every other race as well.

A person who cannot feed himself cannot focus on the learning of culture, and thus cannot be a cultured person. That person has no consciousness of his self, race, or socioeconomic position. He only understands that he is hungry and wanting, and focuses all his attention toward the end of fulfilling his material desires. Even if that person were given the basic moral instruction, the lack of material goods would tempt that person greatly to go back on his principles.

The black person who cannot provide for his or her own needs is a slave to poverty, and therefore, Washington argues that the first steps to be taken should be to help the black person become economically self-sufficient. Anything than more than just that would be the work of "impatient extremists among Negroes in the North", as written by Washington in his 1899 article, "The Case of the Negro". However, Washington's plan to cultivate blacks' economic productivity first was in many ways distasteful to Dubois. Dubois argued that stressing the training of blacks for economic productivity was no better than the condition under slavery.

Blacks would continue to live in squalor compared to their white counterparts, and in return for their hard work, they would receive relatively meager wages or returns. Dubois was not opposed to any practical steps to improve the blacks' economic lot. However, he was opposed to what Washington's "economic training" implied to the rest of the world: that indeed, blacks were no more than laborers and that were less than human. Thus, Dubois was eager to prove that the intellectual, moral, and cultural capacities of the black person were equal to those of any other race. Dubois did not believe in a slow, gradual assimilation into white society, but believed in the immediate political organization of black persons to assert themselves as a free, independent, and equal race and culture. The two writers' theories were applied in real life, as Washington set up the Tuskegee Institute to help in the economic training of black persons in the South, while Dubois formed the NAACP to organize black people as a group and race.

Both Dubois and Washington had logical explanations of their positions, and the fruits of their beliefs and work are evident today, as race relations continue to improve and the drive for true equality among Americans of every color pushes forth.

Bibliography

Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of Our Spiritual Strivings". Making Connections. McGraw-Hill: Boston, 2001.
Du Bois, W.E.B. "Of the Training of Black Men". The Atlantic Monthly. 12 February 1997.
web. Washington, Booker T. "The Awakening of the Negro". The Atlantic Monthly. 12 February 1997.
web. Washington, Booker T. "The Case of the Negro". The Atlantic Monthly. 12 February 1997.