Dubois V Washington
...the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Both men had the same goals--eradicating racism, segregation, and discrimination against their race. However, the means to achieve such ends were vastly different, thus the paradox of these Promethean figures have been revisited 100 years later as Black people seek to grapple with their ideas even in the midst of a 40-year, largely self-inflicted genocide.
As America crossed into the twenty-first century, race relations between Blacks and Whites are steadily deteriorating. How could this be? After all, we have had over 35 years of civil rights laws passed by Congress including the Voting Rights Act of 1964, 1968, the Civil Rights Act of 1965, as well as federal law mandating affirmative action programs. These programs have in part helped create the viable Black middle class we have today. Why then, in the midst of the greatest increase of Black affluence in American history, has poverty and crime exploded to such an extent in our major cities that sociologists have coined a new term to describe the intractable Black poor?--"the Underclass".
Before we attempt to answer this question, people should ask the question: How should Blacks have responded to White racism, segregation, discrimination suffered by them in the early twentieth century? And upon which philosophy should Black people have relied to help them overcome these problems? The conventional wisdom espoused by the Black elite of the liberal left would have you believe that the civil rights movement grew out of a philosophical war between Du Bois and Washington.
These two men whose diametrically opposing strategies, sought to help Blacks receive equal treatment under the law. To Black liberals, Du Bois's philosophy was said to have prevailed over Washington's as being a more feasible and effective way to combat racism. It must be noted however,...
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