Tentative Answer: DuBois (for Nikhil)

1.  Booker T. Washington urged young African-Americans to become trained in the skills which would make them useful and desirable members of the broader community. Why, and how does DuBois dispute Washington’s proposal?

Washington’s advocacy and success garnered favorability from both the North and South for representing, at least superficially, African American interest while working within white conservative institutions and ideals. He advised African Americans to give up their insistence, at least in that temporal context, on political power, civil rights, and higher education. Du Bois, fiercely critical of Washington’s disappointment of African American franchise at this most crucial moment in modern American political history, points out the tripartite paradox of Washington’s advocacy:

Firstly, it is unrealistic to expect African-American business men and property-owners to thrive in modern competitive spheres when they are unable to defend their civic rights without suffrage or the ability to politically organize around their civic interests. Secondly, an African-American individual’s thrift and self-respect are close to impossible to maintain when they are expected to submit to civic inferiority and work in an environment of oppression. Finally, Washington advocates skills training to become useful members of society but advises that African-Americans not demand higher education. In retort, Du Bois asks, how can skills training and common-school education sustain if African-Americans aren’t trained in colleges or other higher education institutions to then graduate and teach in common schools?

Essentially, Du Bois suggests that in appealing to a rhetoric of African-Americans accepting their place in society and working upward through existing institutions, Washington fails to forge a path of radical change that would effectively elevate the place of African-Americans in American society.