"Thinking with (and about)
Mr. Washington"
W. Fitzhugh Brundage
William B. Umstead Professor of History
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill The recent exchanges between Curtis J. Evans and David Sehat about
Booker T. Washington in the Journal of Southern Religion have been
models of thoughtful and learned debate. After reading them in conjunction
with Robert J. Norrell's new biography of Washington, there can be no
question that Washington warrants this renewed attention. And when read
along with two recent reviews of Norrell's biography, these exchanges
remind us that Washington remains a Rorschach test.(1) During his lifetime and since, Washington has
provoked sharply divergent opinions about his motivations, actions, and
legacy. In particular, he has stood accused of moral culpability in the
oppression of his race. Many historically important figures, Martin Van
Buren and Thomas A. Edison among them, provoke few if any debates about
their moral culpability. For others, though, moral culpability is assigned
selectively. For instance, W. E. B. DuBois's colossal errors in championing
Woodrow Wilson during the election of 1912 or in endorsing World War I
carry little stigma and merit little attention. Washington, however, stands
accused of being the handmaiden of the whites who strove to achieve the "highest stage of white supremacy."
Conflicting conclusions were recently on display in the pages of the New
Yorker and the New York Times. Kelefa Sanneh, in his New
Yorker review of Norrell's biography, chides Norrell for belaboring
the constraints within which Washington worked. Norrell's Washington is not
a formidable figure but rather a diminished man, a prisoner of his time and
his circumstances. For Sanneh the street fighter Washington depicted in Louis
Harlan's biography of the "Wizard of Tuskegee" is a more
compelling and impressive (if tragic) character.(2) Shelby Steele, writing in the New York Times
Book Review, reaches starkly different conclusions about both Washington
and Norrell's biography. Steele applauds Norrell "for his attention to
historical context," which "has the effect of normalizing
Washington." Steele posits that Washington's accommodation of
segregation was "a rather brave and pro-black position," and concludes
by applauding Norrell for giving "back to America one of its greatest
heroes."(3) What
is striking about the perspectives of these two reviewers is how closely
they track long-running arguments over Washington. Washington, for these
reviewers, is a mirror in which the face of heroic black leadership is
either revealed or exposed. Inevitably, both reviewers enlist W. E. B.
DuBois to bolster their arguments, so that Washington and DuBois become
iconic adversaries in a bi-polar black community.
These various but familiar assessments of Washington by Sanneh and Steele
underscore the service that Sehat and Evans have performed in their
exchange. Perhaps their most important contribution is to take Washington
seriously as a thinker and a public intellectual. Washington, of course,
preferred to portray himself as a man of action who mocked the folly and
extravagance of pedantry. The common black laborer who squandered his time
studying Latin was a familiar target of his scorn. Yet, Washington's
disdain for the life of the mind was feigned; as Sehat and Evans point out,
Washington energetically participated in crucial debates about religion,
race, and democracy. The surface veneer of Washington's utilitarian
pronouncements on the issues of his day obscured his more complex and
comprehensive understanding of and facility with abstract thought. And
whereas Louis Harlan portrays Washington as a man consumed by the pursuit
and exercise of power, Sehat and Evans locate the spring of Washington's
ambitions elsewhere. Conviction, at least as much as crass opportunism,
motivated Washington. Thus, to dismiss Washington's lampooning of black
ministers as merely playing to racist audiences is to fail to understand
how his critique of black religion fit into his systematic philosophy of
racial advancement. (It is a striking coincidence that Ed Blum, in his W.
E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet, has insisted that we acknowledge the
centrality of religion and spirituality to DuBois's thought while Sehat and
Evans are drawing our attention to Washington's engagement with religion.)(4)
Sehat and Evans differ most sharply over the historian's obligation
to address and assign moral culpability. At first glance, Sehat and Evans may
appear to be stumbling down the same well-traveled path taken by Sanneh and
Steele. But Sehat and Evans's exchange over whether we should assign blame
to Washington for the triumph of Jim Crow racism is instead elevated by its
uncommon clarity and cogency. Moreover, they ponder carefully the stakes
involved in assessing historical agency and assigning moral culpability to
historical agents. That Sehat and Evans disagree about the scope of
Washington's agency is clear. For Sehat, the essential starting place to
understand Washington is the "structural determinants and system of
oppression" within which he had to operate. Anticipating the
interpretation of Norrell's biography, Sehat reminds readers of the
precariousness of Washington's position and the manifest constraintsideological,
political, and economicthat restricted his field of action. Evans
concedes that Washington was caught up in "an ensnaring discourse of
racial advance and civilization," but nevertheless insists that he had
"limited but real choices." Their different interpretations of
Washington's agency leads in turn to vexing questions of historical
responsibility. Sehat readily acknowledges that Washington "bears a
certain amount of responsibility for the system of segregation that his
statements reinforced," but insists that excessive concern for
assigning blame to Washington risks diverting our attention from the
structures of dominations that, to the greatest degree, dictated
Washington's course. For Sehat, Washington is both interesting and
important, not because of his culpability, but because through him
historians can gain access to many of the central issues of his era. Evans
counters that "we show more respect to our historical subjects if we
do attempt to understand what choices and options they had rather than
using them as mere pawns or acted-upon-objects to illuminate a wider social
background." Let me confess that my own approach to Washington has been closer to
Sehat's than Evans's. Like Sehat, I have found Washington good "to think
with." Because of his multiple roles as a celebrity, author, educator,
politician, reformer, and perceived exemplary representative of his race,
Washington was a participant in many of the most important debates and
events of his era. As such, he warrants far more scholarly attention than
he has received in recent years. (It is striking that the centenary of the
publication of Washington's Up From Slavery passed in 2001
virtually without notice.) I previously assumed that until historians cast
off inherited judgments about Washington's culpability in the advance of
white supremacy, no scholarly reconsideration of Washington was likely or
perhaps even possible. I can well understand why Sehat contends that it is "more productive to bracket the issue of responsibility" so that
we can get on to the more productive enterprise of "illuminating"
Washington's world.
Evans's rejoinder to Sehat has prodded me to reconsider my assumptions
about how best to approach Washington. I now agree with Evans that a "hard embrace of historicism" is not the way to recover
Washington from neglect. Rather than sidestepping discussions of
Washington's moral agency, culpability, and/or responsibility, Evans
persuades me that they are essential components of any understanding of
Washington and his age. Indeed, calibrating carefully Washington's moral
agency and responsibility may be exactly what is needed to revise stale
caricatures of Washington (and, to a degree, W. E. B. DuBois). Because his
position and power were so singular in his heyday it is vital to understand
where, when, and how Washington exercised his limited agency to subvert or
reconcile himself with his race's oppression.
In closing, these exchanges confirm that Washington is "good to think
with." Not only is the study of his life and thought essential to
understanding his age, but also it relates to pressing questions about the
purpose of scholarship and the relationship of historical judgments to
morality. I only hope that others will follow Sehat, Evans, and Norrell's
lead and get to know Washington much better. When they do so, they will
have Sehat and Evans to thank for helping to clear the trail.
1. Robert J. Norrell, Up from History: The Life of Booker T. Washington (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 2009).
2. Kelefa Sanneh, Annals of Politics, "The Wizard," New Yorker,
February 2, 2009, p. 26-28.
3. Shelby Steele, "Pride and Compromise," New York Times Book
Review, February 12, 2009, p. BR-19.
4. Edward J. Blum, W. E. B. Du Bois: American Prophet (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007).