C. L. R. James Quotes
Today we ought to be able to see first that Booker T. Washington faced a situation in which he was seeking desperately for a way out, and he could see no way out except capitulation.
James, C. L. R. American Civilization. Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1993.
The time was the mid 18th Century.
In the early 20th century, Carver and Du Bois were the two most important Negro leaders in America. However, they disagreed over tactics. Carver tended to believe that if the Negro would be educated and trained for meaningful occupations, he would rise in the eyes of the whites and discrimination would diminish. Du Bois was more cynical as can be seen in this quotation as he looked back on history when he was 95 and close to death. He had the advantage at this time of seeing that Washington’s strategy had failed, but he opposed Washington on this from the beginning. Most whites preferred Washington’s view as whites were relived of immediate moral responsibility for racism and the burden was placed on Blacks to train, develop and display themselves as worthy. It was only when very large numbers of Blacks had done this and nothing much changed in terms of civil and economic rights, that it was clear that Washington’ view had been hopelessly naïve.
The letter was written in the supposed style of a Black after Emancipation and includes most of the ugly false stereotypes of the worst of the racists of the present and the slaveowners of past times. Williams stated that he was not a racist and was trying to make a point about freedom required risk and responsibility. However, the effort was interpreted by many people, Black and white, to be insulting and a put down of African Americans. At the same time, although most of the Tea Party members were not racists, most of the racists in America were supporters of the Tea Party. Those people interpreted the quotation as "telling it like it is" about Blacks who do not want the responsiblities and risks of freedom and are not yet developed sufficiently to be equal citizens in a democracy.
Historically, until recently there has been a migration from the South to other parts of the country. After legal segregation ended, the out migration slowed and by the end of the 20th century, people—including intellectuals began moving to the South. Generally, the vestiges of the anti intellectualism began to fade, but even into the 21st century the College Board Test Scores and other educational measures were generally lower in the South than in the rest of the country. Ironically, whereas the Southern insistence on segregated schools was to prevent the intellectual erosion that racists thought would come with integration, the educational achievement of the schools and population of the less segregated school areas was considerably better. With legal segregation, there were very few high quality universities in the South and no “World Class” schools. However, along with desegregation has been the intellectual and academic improvement of the Southern Schools and the South began to have, for the first time in America, some educational institutions that were on a par with the rest of the country. The South paid a heavy price for segregation and insularity.
Johnson was then Vice President.
Cyril Lionel Robert James, who sometimes wrote under the pen-name J. R. Johnson, was a Trinidadian historian, journalist and Marxist. His works are influential in various theoretical, social, and historiographical contexts. His work is a staple of Marxism, and he figures as a pioneering and influential voice in postcolonial literature. A tireless political activist, James is the author of the 1937 work World Revolution outlining the history of the Communist International, which stirred debate in Trotskyist circles, and in 1938 he wrote on the Haitian Revolution, The Black Jacobins.
