How Progressives Took American Blacks Down the Wrong Path.
"What if the black political establishment was never meant to help all blacks but just the elite blacks?
In popular culture, it seems like a clear divide, you are either for black people or you are against them. This is evidenced by the social stigma associated with not supporting the Marxist BLM movement even to the point of kneeling in submission and literally kissing their feet. But since blacks first started participating in the abolition movement there have always been power struggles and conflicting ideologies. Fredrick Douglass vs the Garrisonian's, Booker T. Washington vs W.E.B. Dubois, M.L.K vs Malcolm X. Even today there is a muffled black leadership with ideas opposing the usual cast of characters the media promotes.
So why is it that we never hear both sides of this story either in History books or in media? And why has the opposing side been vilified to this day as sell-outs? The answer is the same as it always has been, Power and Politics.
In 1881 the slave-born Booker T. Washington in his late 20's became the leader of the Tuskegee Institute. a school that he and his students built by bricks they made by hand. Character, entrepreneurship, education, and real-world skills were the focus of the highly successful school. He also, believed that to succeed you don't expend all of your energy on politics but you create so much value through your efforts and character that you can not be denied. It was said that he created more self-made millionaires than Harvard, Yale and Princeton combined and anticipated the skills-based economy by 100 years. So what happened? Washington at this time was the most influential black leader in America. Surely this was a formula that would lift blacks out of their circumstances. Because Washington decided to work outside the system instead of politicking he was vilified by his black opposition as an "accommodationist" even though Washington's ideals where later revitalized by Malcolm X, and Marcus Garvey, who were also villainized for this position.
W.E.B. Dubois. A Harvard educated academic and founder of the NAACP would come on the scene in the early 1900's first as a friend but later as Washington's harshest critic. He believed developing real-world skills was training for slavery and menial work. His focus was on accumulating political power to demonstrate that elite blacks were just as good as elite whites. Why focus on elitism?
The unspoken truth from the American Left is that DuBois was an ardent Eugenicist that believed that "only fit blacks should procreate to eradicate the race's heritage of moral iniquity" It was an "Assimilationist Eugenics" that believed the "Talented Tenth" of all races should mix to create a more improved race. Ironically, DuBois and the NAACP promoted Eugenics through anti-lynching "Better Baby" contest that evaluated the genetic superiority of winning babies who would be featured in the organizations "The Crisis" magazine. The Eugenicist concept of the "Talented Tenth" stands to this day among DuBois acolytes. He was also a Marxist and a Member of the Communist Party that praised Russia and China's coercive regimes till his death in the 1960s at age 95. One of his criticism of capitalism is that it only created a few black millionaires.
Booker T. Washington understood that politicians were simply middlemen with empty promises, no skills, and that their elitism and livelihood depended on keeping a lower class. Washington wrote,
“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.”
The contrast between these two figures is stark and the choice of which philosophy to follow seems pretty clear. Unfortunately, the black establishment alongside their democratic friends followed the path to political power, acquired it, and built leftist strongholds that have become the most dangerous places on earth to be black. As impoverished blacks in these democrat political strongholds have found out, this political power never translates into power for them, so they are left without skills or economic influence. As Malcolm X pointed out they are left wallowing in the "beggar" position as their leaders get richer and eternally promise salvation through voting.
As you look at today's racial turmoil and see the Marxist groups like BLM and ANTIFA ravage the Democratic strongholds that have controlled every aspect of life from housing to Police for the last failed 70+ years. You have to ask yourself, were the “submerged tenth” DuBois term for “lowest class of criminals, prostitutes, and loafers.." ever meant to share in the eugenic "uplifting" or as DuBois believed, should be bred out of existence?
Feel free to say black lives matter while rejecting the BLM and ANTIFA organizations because it's just the same failed power-hungry Marxism dressed in extremes. You will be in the company of greater men.
The Ideals of Booker T. Washington never died, in fact, every other minority group including non-American blacks has unknowingly used his universal strategies for successes and proven them true many times over, unencumbered by the political power struggle that clouds the mind and only benefits the Talented Tenth of political opportunist."