Booker T. Washington on Black Victimhood

Black racists are coming out of the woodwork. It’s hard to imagine how vile and bigoted they are in their attacks on Herman Cain. Such treatment has a long history. Today, it’s an industry.

A number of black “leaders” (e.g., Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton) have made their living by promoting black victimhood and white guilt. Jesse Jackson has been shaking down corporations with the scam for decades. Booker T. Washington (1865–1915) warned of such people within the black community in his 1911 book My Larger Education. He described them as “problem profiteers”:

“There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs – partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.” (p. 118)

Washington could have had in view, although writing nearly a hundred years ago, black people who are railing against Herman Cain and other blacks who have not succumbed to plantation living. Cain doesn’t present himself as a victim, and this disturbs people like Al Sharpton. Cain lived at a time when there were “colored” water fountains, segregated schools and neighborhoods, and racial discrimination that few people today can imagine. If anyone has a right to play the victim card, it’s Cain. He didn’t feel sorry for himself. He stayed out of trouble, worked hard, and made something of himself without the help of a cadre of “poverty pimps.” Cain is the antithesis of the Democrat Party and 90 percent of...

I cannot recommend highly enough the book “Up From Slavery” by Booker T. Washington.

It is short. Booker tries to pack a punch with each and every word, and he does.

Here is his speech to the International Exposition in Atlanta in 1895.

Mr. President and gentlemen of the Board of Directors and citizens. One third of the population of the South is of the Negro race. No enterprise seeking the material, civil, or moral welfare of this section can disregard this element of our population and reach the highest success. I must convey to you, Mr. President and Directors, and Secretaries and masses of my race, when I say that in no way have the value and manhood of the American Negro been more fittingly and generously recognized, than by the managers of this magnificent exposition at every stage of its progress. It is a recognition that will do more to cement the friendship of the two races than any occurrence since the dawn of our freedom. Not only this, but the opportunities here afforded will awaken among us a new era of industrial progress.

Ignorant and inexperienced, it is not strange that in the first years of our new life we began at the top instead of the bottom, that a seat in Congress or the state legislature was more sought than real estate or industrial skill, that the political convention of some teaching had more attraction than starting a dairy farm or a stockyard.

A ship lost at sea for many days suddenly sighted a friendly vessel. From the mast of the unfortunate vessel was seen a signal: “Water, water. We die of thirst.” The answer from the friendly vessel at once came back: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A second time, the signal, “Water, send us water!” went up from the distressed vessel. And was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” A third and fourth signal for water was answered: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” The captain of the distressed vessel, at last heeding the injunction, cast down his bucket and it came up full of fresh, sparkling water from the mouth of the Amazon River.

To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land, or who underestimate the importance of preservating friendly relations with the southern white man who is their next door neighbor, I would say: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down, making friends in every manly way of the people of all races, by whom you are surrounded.

To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted, I would repeat what I have said to my own race: “Cast down your bucket where you are.” Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your fireside. Cast down your bucket among these people who have without strikes and labor wars tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, just to make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South.

Thanks for the appreciation. I think every American should read his book.

I took some of my favorite quotes from “Up From Slavery” and made the one page version and sent it around to people I knew who would appreciate it.

Here are the quotes I liked.....

“The whole machinery of slavery was so constructed as to cause labour, as a rule, to be looked upon as a badge of degradation, of inferiority. Hence labour was something that both races on the slave plantation sought to escape. The slave system on our place, in a large measure, took the spirit of self-reliance and self help out of the white people. My old master had many boys and girls, but not one, so far as I know, mastered a single trade or special line of productive industry. The girls were not taught to cook, sew, or even to take care of the house.”

“Had (I) been a member of a more popular race, I should have been inclined to yield to the temptation of depending upon my ancestry and my colour to do that for me which I should do for myself. Years ago I resolved that because I had no ancestry myself I would leave a record of which my children would be proud, and which might encourage them to still higher effort”

“Among a large class (in Washington D.C.) there seemed to be a dependence upon the Government for every conceivable thing. The members of this class had little ambition to create a position for themselves, but wanted the Federal officials to create one for them.”

“The thing that they (Amerindian students at Tuskegee) disliked most, I think, were to have their long hair cut, to give up wearing their blankets, and to cease smoking; but no white American ever thinks that any other race is wholly civilized until he wears the white man’s clothes, eats the white man’s food, speaks the white man’s language, and professes the white man’s religion.”

“At one time Mr. (Frederick) Douglass was travelling in the state of Pennsylvania, and was forced, on account of his colour, to ride in the baggage-car, in spite of the fact that he had paid the same price for his passage that the other passengers had paid. When some of the white passengers went into the baggage-car to console Mr. Douglass, and one of them said to him: “I am sorry, Mr. Douglass, that you have been degraded in this manner,” Mr. Douglass straightened himself up on the box upon which he was sitting and replied: “They cannot degrade Frederick Douglass. The soul that is in me no man can degrade. I am not the one that is being degraded on account of this treatment, but those who are inflicting it upon me.””

“Mr. Campbell said to me, in his fatherly way: “Washington, always remember that credit is capital.”

“I early learned that it is a hard matter to convert an individual by abusing him, and that this is more often accomplished by giving credit for all the praiseworthy actions performed than by calling attention alone to all the evil done.”

“Nearly sixteen millions of hands will aid you in pulling the load upward, or they will pull against you the load downward. We shall constitute one-third and more of the ignorance and crime in the South, or one third of its intelligence and progress; we shall contribute one-third to the business and industrial prosperity of the South, or we shall prove a veritable body of death, stagnation, depressing, retarding every effort to advance the body politic”

“He is too great for that (color prejudice). In my contact with people I find that, as a rule, it is only the little, narrow people who live for themselves, who never read good books, who do not travel, who never open up their soul in a way to permit them to come into contact with what is highest and best in the world.”

“Then decide within yourselves whether a race that is thus willing to die for its country should not be given the highest opportunity to live for its country”

“(if one is able) to build a house, or to be able to practice medicine, as well or better than someone else, they will be rewarded regardless of race or colour. In the long run the world is going to have the best, and any difference in race, religion, or previous history will not long keep the world from what it wants”

The book is in my library and I read it every couple of years. It saddens me that black people feel such animosity toward the opportunities that have been afforded to them totally ignoring Booker T. Washington’s sage advice. When will they as a race stop depending on handouts and strive for success on their own merits? Why do they want to be slaves of the system? There isn’t a human being alive today that hasn’t experienced the evils of slavery at one point or another in their family history. Slavery was normal hundreds and thousands of years ago. While most have overcome, a very large number of blacks refuse. Those that have overcome become quite successful. Mr. Cain is a shining example. He had the will. The taxpayers of this country plowed billions of wasted dollars in the welfare system and the recipients are no better off and may be even worse off than they were. Black people living in Africa with nothing show more determination and are more respectful of others than those who live off American welfare. I think its time to cut these people off.

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