Thursday, December 1, 2011

A Tale of Two Philosophies in the Civil Rights Movement

Ecclesiastes 9:11: “The race is not to the swift - It is not by swiftness, nor by strength and valor, that races are gained and battles won.” The Bible teaches that “races” are won by humble virtues like perseverance, excellence and diligence. Christianity’s spread across the ancient Mediterranean world was due in large part to Christians’ persistence in doing good –from saving unwanted babies to caring for the poor and orphaned on Rome’s streets- even under the enormous pressure of persecution. Christianity didn’t conquer the ancient world by overturning the Roman state. No doubt there were those who resented Rome and wanted to fight fire with fire, like the Jewish zealots before them. But this was not to be. Christians chose the plan laid out in the Bible. It was doubtless far harder in the short run, but it guaranteed a lasting victory. Christianity won through sheer perseverance, beating an overconfident but napping Rome at its own game. As the Emperor Julian said, “Nothing has contributed to the progress of the superstition of the Christians so much as their charity to strangers… the impious Galileans provide not only for their own poor, but for ours as well.”

This classic conflict between power and humility, speed and patience, self-confidence and endurance has been played out many times in history. A more recent example can be found in the civil rights movement. The man who was in many ways the father of the movement was Booker T. Washington. He had been born in slavery, the illegitimate son of a white landowner. After his family was freed following the Civil War, Washington had to pull himself up by the bootstraps through working grueling jobs like tending a salt furnace and mining coal. He then worked himself through a secondary education and was appointed as the head of the Tuskegee Institute, a new school for freedmen. Over the years, Washington created a vast network of entrepreneurs, philanthropists (many of them white) and charitable organizations to fund schools and vocational opportunities for African-Americans throughout the South. Although he also worked to end Jim Crow laws and supported civil rights initiatives, his philosophy was not primarily one of setting blacks’ political power against whites’. He believed that any enduring victory won by African-Americans would have to rest on a more solid foundation than ballot-boxes and legal jargon on paper. Just like Christians’ victory in ancient Rome, this would have to be a victory over the hearts, minds and pocket books of the enemy. Better to overcome mistreatment and discrimination by showing how baseless they were than by wresting power and winning a legal victory only. The key was "…industry, thrift, intelligence and property." Washington encouraged African-Americans to become the very best in whatever field they worked. This far-sighted and conciliatory attitude is made even more remarkable when one recalls the difficult circumstances of Washington’s early life and all the reasons he had to harbor bitterness.

But it made him enemies, including a fellow black intellectual named W.E.B. Dubois. Dubois had tremendous talent, the result of an innate gifting helped along by both an upbringing in relative wealth and a Harvard education. Understandably, he was tired of African-Americans plodding along at a snail’s pace towards freedom and acceptance. But this impatience and frustration with discrimination in attitudes and laws - though he had not experienced them the same way Booker T. had – pushed him to advocate for a faster solution. Dubois viewed education and power as the only way to achieve true equality, and he vocally opposed Washington’s strategy, even going so far as to give him the nickname “the Great Compromiser." Through attaining positions of influence in the government, the legal system and academia, African-Americans would be able to shape society to win full equality. Eventually this emphasis on a top-down approach to equality led Dubois and the organization he helped found, the NAACP, to embrace socialism. According to this view, the slow, steady methods of Washington were tantamount to treason

Dubois’ desire to see his race achieve equality in his lifetime was certainly a noble intention, but noble intentions can be hijacked by impatience. If that impatience is allowed to define beliefs, it can lead to embracing the gravely erroneous notion that the “ends justify the means.” Booker T. Washington’s ideas promised no immediate change and may not have not had as much appeal at the time for that reason, but they’ve been vindicated in retrospect. Regardless of the political power wielded by African-Americans, the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s would have been impossible to win long-term without the support of whites nationwide. That support was gained between the 40s and 60s largely because African-Americans had (knowingly or not) followed Washington’s advice: they became the very best at whatever they did. African-Americans’ skill as sports heroes (like Jackie Robinson and Mohammed Ali), singers and musicians (Sam Cooke, Chuck Berry, Ray Charles, Nat King Cole, the Supremes and the Temptations) defined the popular consciousness of the entire nation during the 1960s. Every teenager listened to Doo-Wop, Rock and Roll, Soul and Motown – all genres that had their beginnings in African-American music. Through television and radio, African-American stars found their way into every home and car. A whole generation grew up seeing that the other race was every bit as capable of innovation as their own. African-Americans had won the battle of the mind and heart, therefore ensuring victory in the political battle that Martin Luther King Jr. would lead.

Booker T. Washington’s capitalistic and individualistic philosophy was thus vindicated, making it all the more unfortunate that fifty years later it’s in danger of being thrown away. When the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was passed, people mistook the culmination of the civil rights movement for its cause. They seized the opportunity to invoke Dubois and use the state as a sort of “savior” for African-Americans. This has since become the prevailing philosophy in talks about equality between the races. It has created endemic dependency on government, poverty. It has also fostered a bitterness and victim mentality that had no place in the life of the one who began the movement - one who had actually known the horrors of life as a slave. Washington would be appalled. In eschewing power and instead stressing industry, excellence, patience and winning the war of the mind, he recognized that it was folly to exchange aristocratic Southern masters for a whole government of far more powerful masters.