WEB Dubois is a hero of the academic left because he adopted Marxism in his latter days—battling with the FBI, joining the Communist Party in 1961, and then emigrating to Ghana, where he died in 1963. But what is often forgotten is the earlier great debate he had with Booker T. Washington in the latter third of the 19th century about the education of the newly freed slaves.
Born a slave, Booker T. Washington worked his way through Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute and then attended college at Wayland Seminary. He then was hired to be the first leader of the Tuskegee Institute, which was founded by the Alabama legislature in 1881.
WEB DuBois was from the Berkshire Mountain resort town of Great Barrington (MA). Racially integrated, the 1842 arrival of the railroad had turned Great Barrington into a Gilded Age community for those fleeing the summer heat and pollution of New York City. DuBois went to Fisk, Harvard, and studied in Germany, eventually earning a Ph.D. from Harvard.
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WEB Dubois was a member of the Niagara movement and a founder of what became the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). He favored advancing civil rights via litigation and ending racism by government fiat. He also favored educating only the top 10 percent of blacks and having them serve as both representatives of and advocates for all blacks.
Booker T. Washington had a very different approach—often called the Atlanta Compromise—where he was willing to tolerate discrimination and segregation as long as the Southern White community would permit black education and economic development. He wanted Northern whites to help fund black education and was quite successful in getting Sears & Roebucks to fund a lot of one-room schoolhouses of which the rural Black communities were immensely proud.
It had been illegal to teach a slave how to read, but their children were being taught how to read and they were immensely proud of that – a point that I doubt WEB DuBois—who grew up in a state that had mandated universal public education since 1642—ever really quite realized.
Now, I am leaving a lot out of this, including how racism in the South got worse after Reconstruction ended in 1877 and then the Lodge—voting rights—Bill being defeated in 1890. I also don’t think either man was as absolute as I paint them, but I am trying not to go too deeply into the weeds here.
But do you not see the resemblance to the issues of today—the issues starkly presented in the recent election?
Yes, Donald Trump is in the tradition of Booker T. Washington. MAGA wants JOBS—they want their children to get an education that enables their children to get a GOOD JOB so that they are PROSPEROUS. If one thing defines the MAGA movement, it is the desire to have a country where anyone who tries hard will be successful. Anyone—singular case.
Now compare this to WEB DuBois with his concept of only educating the “top 10 percent,” the concept of society consisting of groups rather than individuals, and having government mandates to fight racism. Isn’t that what we see out of all of these “diversity, equity, and inclusion” offices?
And isn’t “the top 10%” essentially what Affirmative Action (or Affirmative Retribution) is all about? If the average black male high school graduate has the reading and writing ability of the average 7th-grade white female, a couple of hundred blacks going to Harvard are statistically irrelevant. A lot of black and Hispanic men are noticing how much thinner their wallets are than they were in 2019, and they could care less who attends “Moscow on the Charles”—it’s early December, and they need to buy snow tires…
We’re in an era of populism that started with “Screaming” Howard Dean 20 years ago. In many ways, MAGA is just a reflection of underlying populist sentiment, and MAGA absolutely is populism in all of its unvarnished and sometimes quite ugly nature.
Andrew Jackson was a populist. While we view his “spoils system” in the context of having caused the assassination of President Garfield, the underlying principle is actually quite sound in a (small “d”) democratic sense—the people elected a President with a certain agenda, and the Federal bureaucracy ought to do what the President wants because he has a mandate from the people. Likewise, the taxpayers ought to have a say in how their tax dollars are spent and for what.
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Joe Sixpack and Suzy Sweatpants really don’t see the value of degrees in underwater basket weaving. Institutions producing such graduates clearly aren’t meeting the needs of today’s society, so may I suggest that we take a look at what has happened in the past when Americans felt that their current higher education system wasn’t meeting their needs.
Harvard College in the 18th Century produced ministers and elementary school teachers – the latter being young men who hadn’t figured out what they wanted to do with their lives yet. For example, the Worcester (MA) minister went to Harvard and came back with a young John Adams, who taught school in Worcester for three years before becoming a lawyer.
This had broken down by 1837, so starting with what is now Framingham (MA) State University in 1839, Horace Mann started the Normal School movement, creating teacher’s colleges. Other states followed suit and this was the origin of not only the teacher’s colleges but a lot of state colleges which subsequently expanded to offer other majors.
Likewise, in a desperate attempt to prevent the young people of Vermont from emigrating to the fertile —rock free—soils of the Ohio River Valley, Vermont Congressman Justin Morrill introduced the Land Grant Act to establish colleges that taught “Scientific Agriculture and Mechanical Arts” (i.e., engineering). This was the origin of almost all of the public colleges and universities that didn’t start as a normal school – and the intent was simple – teach a vocational education to young farmers and if they learned a few humanities in the process, so be it.
But the difference between the 19th century and now is that the market is saturated. Hence even without the demographic cliff of Fall 2016—when the babies not born in 2008 won’t be graduating from high school—society is going to shift resources instead of adding to them as was done in the 19th Century. The Baby Boomers want health care, the Millennials want houses—there is no voting block to sustain funding for higher education.
My point is that the election ought to be a wakeup call to everyone in the academy. Preparing people for jobs at Starbucks ain’t gonna do it anymore—the institutions that survive (which won’t be all) will have quickly learned how to ensure that their graduates are getting good jobs upon graduation. To ensure that there actually is a value added in the education.
Image of Booker T. Washington on Wikipedia
This was somewhat interesting until I got to the phrase “Joe Sixpack and Suzy Sweatpants.” Then, I stopped reading. Apart from the childishness of such epithets, I am struck by the condescension with which academics — on both sides of the aisle — talk about those people outside of the faculty lounge. Kindness, respect and sophistication of mind have been vanquished in the quest to make a point, I fear.
If you’d read the rest of the sentence, including my reference to a degree in “underwater basketweaving”, I think you would understand that I was expressing condescension toward institutions of higher education, and not working class American voters.
And yes, that’s what “Joe Sixpack” actually means — it was coined in 1971 by Boston Globe Columnist Martin Nolan to distinguish from Liberal college professors (there are over 60 colleges in the Boston area).
I add “Suzy Sweatpants” both to be inclusive and to represent the harried women who rush around picking up their children after work and then cook supper — and they change into sweatpants and sneakers before doing this.
Second, I *am* a Joe Sixpack — my driver’s license says “any vehicle” and I grew up on the stern of a lobster boat, not in a faculty lounge. I’m trying to explain what the election meant to those who *are* in the faculty lounge, almost none of whom are on the right side of the isle — and none of whom seem to understand the seismic shift that last month’s election represents.
Hillary Clinton called us “deplorables” and out came the “proud to be deplorable” T shirts. Joe Biden called us “garbage” and this was Howie Carr’s response: https://howiecarrshow.com/joe-bidens-trash-talk-more-dem-garbage/
I’m sorry that you misinterpreted what I wrote — but you clearly did.