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...
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...p; 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.
Works Cited
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. <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/blacked/dutrain.htm>.
Washington, Booker T. “The Awakening of the Negro.” The Atlantic Monthly.
12 February 1997. <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/blacked/washaw.htm>.
Washington, Booker T. “The Case of the Negro.” The Atlantic Monthly. 12 February
1997. <http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/flashbks/black/washbh.htm>.
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