Booker T vs. WEB DuBois

BTW—education and industry

Propaganda film made by War Dept during WWII:  Celebrating achievement of black colleges during War Effort; recruitment; what kinds of jobs (both civil and military) were actually available?  Focus on agriculture, manufacturing/factory, nutrition, nursing, applied science—practical education

How would you interpret the statue of Booker T  Lifting the Veil? The “benighted/brutal/uncivilized” slave seeking enlightenment through education; Booker T as educated “white” man; education reforms the brutal man into an enlightened citizen

What does the film ignore?  Segregation (living, workplace), not equal opportunity/careers, different code or notion of the purpose of education?  War-work (practical or applied education—not theoretical, job-related, security, one mention of liberal education but related to economics) creating and maintaining educated sub-class

Up from Slavery

p. 14—no bitterness for former masters; former slaves can help whites

Slavery (is a social evil) not monolithic (differs from place to place,  situation to situation)

Teaching himself the alphabet—learn to read—importance of 19^th C American (Emerson) “self-reliance”

p.122 his theory of education is molded from a very pragmatic (practical vs idealistic) point of view; industry/uplift—not idealism or abstraction—self-sufficient (agriculture/industry)

    “In fact, one of the saddest things I saw during the month of travel which I have described was a young man, who had attended some high school, sitting down in a one-room cabin, with grease on his clothing, filth all around him, and weeds in the yard and garden, engaged in studying a French grammar.) (122)

WEB DuBois

Afraid that Washington’s model will continue oppression and segregation; problem of 20^th C is problem of color-line; twin consciousness: black and American

How does it feel to be a problem?  Absurdity of being black American—lack of coherent identity

This double-consciousness; twin-identity (Black and American); what does the Africa have to teach the world?  What does America? 

How does he differ from BTW?  BTW (economics comes first, political equality will follow—WEB, just the opposite)

Atlanta Exposition Address

New South—single agricultural economy is out, we’re gonna develop a modern industrial pluralistic society that is truly democratic

Cast down your bucket—use black labor force that is already here—to white investors—some people called it xenophobic

A third of the population in the South is black—fact—You can’t build the “New South” without this resource—pragmatic approach—economic, not moral appeal (logical appeal, not ethos or pathos)

Master of rhetoric (persuasion):  rhetorical triangle: speaker (BTW); audience (exposition—upper class, elite business people—Northern and Southern/whites/general newspaper audience) ; message: the South cannot rise without Black resources

Cement relationship between black and white in historical speech: “since dawn of our freedom”—this is most important thing to happen since 1865! (hyperbole? Excessive or outlandish comparison) (pathos—emotional appeal)

Black America in South after 1865—Reconstruction – carpetbaggers exploit Black office-holders—1876 (Great Compromise after Hayes-Tilden presidential election—Hayes, the Republican wins, and Reconstruction is folded back, confederates vote—pass poll taxes, literacy tests, grandfather clauses, and roll back the rights gained after the Civil War).

BTW argues that economic power comes first (will money allow you to do what you need to do what your business to do?)

Rhetorical figure: conceit (or extended metaphor): Ship lost at sea without water   rhetorical trick: black need to cast down their buckets among white South—but really directed at White Business-Power base—cast down your bucket (jobs, investment, etc.) among blacks—Racism is not only illogical—it’s bad business!

Why omit this paragraph from recorded speech (not PC)—as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.  Hey, look, we’re gonna have to start at the bottom.  Don’t trust foreign labor.  Xenophobic?  Not unionized! 

Rhetorical appeal: use of quote about justice: (pathos/ethos)—we are joined by our common history—including your oppression (you owe it to us)—not after social equality

Have we reached a point in which economic power is now delivering social equality?  

WEB Dubois

“One ever feels his two-ness,--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.”

How did BTW become the leader of “black America”?

The Northerner vs. Southerner (Dubois, intellectual/idealistic/abstract/power blocks   v. Washington pragmatic/organic community) one hand-five fingers (organic society metaphor in Atlanta Address)

What would a Northern intellectual say to this? One fist is what society truly is (struggle for power, money—Marx)

“higher aims of life”—cultural development—things are getting worse (not in terms of making money—no civil rights and power—no high culture like Europe Africa or Asia)

“In his failure to realize and impress this last point, Mr. Washington is especially to be criticised. His doctrine has tended to make the whites, North and South, shift the burden of the Negro problem to the Negro's shoulders and stand aside as critical and rather pessimistic spectators; when in fact the burden belongs to the nation, and the hands of none of us are clean if we bend not our energies to righting these great wrongs.”—Dubois on BTW’s ultimate failure

Dubois is also a pioneer of sociology, ethnography—his interest in “sorrow songs” or spirituals are important in folklore (probably took a outsider to appreciate black southern culture)

Wrestling Jacob—emphasis struggle—Jacob wrestles angel and won’t leg him go until he’s blessed him and becomes Israel (black identification with Israelites)

Sorrow songs—articulate the horror of slavery—the mental anguish/oppression that physical freedom alone cannot “undo”   mental slavery worst aspect of slavery?   The idea of the happy dancing slave taken care of by the master is a fake/southern propaganda (Uncle Remus type)

African tradition—call and response (one and many joined)—how song function in society (communication, brings one person’s sorrow into the healing chorus of the many—you are not alone)

“. Actively we have woven ourselves with the very warp and woof of this nation, — we fought their battles, shared their sorrow, mingled our blood with theirs, and generation after generation have pleaded with a headstrong, careless people to despise not Justice, Mercy, and Truth, lest the nation be smitten with a curse. Our song, our toil, our cheer, and warning have been given to this nation in bloodbrotherhood. Are not these gifts worth the giving? Is not this work and striving? Would America have been America without her Negro people?” Dubois