Race Matters

"progress in the enjoyment of all the privileges that will come to us must be the
result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing."
Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Exposition Address" (1895, 1901)

Points for Reflection

Walt Whitman's "I Sing the Body Electric" (1855)

1. what value does Whitman accord the body, relative to the soul (ll.1-8)?
2. does Whitman divide his attention equally between male and female bodies?
3. what qualities does Whitman apply to the common farmer of line thirty-three to explain why he is loved by all who know him?
4. how important are vision and touch for Whitman, relative to other forms of interpersonal communication?
5. what might Whitman mean by the claim that "All things please the soul" (l.51, emphasis added)? Does this seem a nonsensical statement?
6. how does Whitman's appreciation of the female body affect his appreciation of the Arts, of religion, and of the intangible (l.56)?
7. do you find Whitman's description of sex beautiful or offensive (ll.58-63)? Does this description, set amidst a celebration of women, focus more on female sexuality than male sexuality?
8. Whitman declares in section #6 that man, like woman, is "all qualities" (l.75). How similar are the qualities he lists here to those he assigns women in section #5?
9. where does Whitman's poem fall on that political battlefield in which the war of sexual rights is being waged across the nineteenth century (ll. 66-84)?
10. what of the related arenas which concern slavery and immigration (ll.85-124). Where does Whitman stand?
11. how does Whitman “help” the slave auctioneer who “does not half know his business” (l.95)?
12. what touchy topic does Whitman obliquely point towards in lines 115-16?
13. why might Whitman include the phrase "the Body" in lines 120 and 121? How does this phrase modify the meaning of these sentences?
14. how might one "corrupt" their own bodies (ll.5, 128), from Whitman's perspective?
15. a couple times, Whitman moves beyond the skin into the recesses of the body's innermost cavities (ll.41, 100-108, 149-50, 162). Does this strike you as a kind of clinical dissection of the body, or something else?
16. does Whitman leave out anything important in his exhaustive listing of the body's various parts?
17. Does he include body parts that propriety might prefer unlisted?
18. how many of the human actions listed by Whitman require an able body in order to be performed (ll.153-57, 163)?
19. is sympathy, for Whitman, primarily a cerebral experience (l.159)?
20. does Whitman explicitly (or implicitly) include disabled or extraordinary bodies in his celebration of the human form?
    

Booker T. Washington's "Atlanta Exposition Address" (1895, 1901)

1. Du Bois criticizes Booker T. Washington's conciliatory posture towards the South, his habit of "indiscriminate flattery" that appears to compromise the truth. Does Washington's "Atlanta Exposition Address" contain evidence of such deference towards white people? Does Washington seem more preoccupied with appeasing a belligerent South than with improving the position of African Americans?
2. exactly what does Washington mean when he calls black men to "Cast down your bucket where [they] are" (OER 11)? What does he mean when he directs these words at white Southerners?
3. how would twentieth-century America interpret Washington's call for Americans of both races to be "[i]n all things that are purely social . . . as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress" (OER 12)?
4. do any of the following statements by Washington strike you as ironic, given his position on Negro education?
   • "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 . . ." (OER 15).
   • "No man whose vision is bounded by colour can come into contact with what is highest and best in the world" (OER 15).
5. examine closely the following passage from Washington's address. On whom is Washington putting the onus for Negro improvement? "My own belief is, although I have never before said so in so many words, that the time will come when the Negro in the South will be accorded all the political rights which his ability, character, and material possessions entitle him to. I think, though, that the opportunity to freely exercise such political rights will not come in any large degree through outside or artificial forcing, but will be accorded to the Negro by the Southern white people themselves, and that they will protect him in the exercise of those rights" (OER 17).

W. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folk (1903), chps. 1 & 3

1. what does Du Bois mean by his claim that society allows him "no true self-consciousness" and only permits him to see himself "through the revelation of the other world," that he is always made to feel his "two-ness" (Norton 896)?
2. why did post-Emancipation "Negro" ministers and doctors end up practicing "quackery and demagogy," according to W. E. B. Du Bois (Norton 897)?
3. does it make intuitive sense for Du Bois to claim that "the ideal of human brotherhood" among all races can be better obtained by embracing the "unifying ideal of Race" (Norton 900)?
4. what is the "triple paradox" of which Du Bois accuses Booker T. Washington (Norton 906-907)?
5. Du Bois encourages what types of opposition to the "industrial slavery" and "civic death" of the Negro race brought about by Booker T. Washington's overly submissive posture towards the South (Norton 908)?
6. Du Bois concludes that the efforts of his race to improve themselves must be "not simply seconded, but rather aroused and encouraged, by the initiative of the richer and wiser environing group" (Norton 909-10). Into what types of assistance might this claim be translated?
7. does Du Bois advocate blanket hatred of white Southerners?
8. to what ends do Du Bois and Washington each employ Biblical ideas and images?
   
   
   
   
   Forever Free (1867)
   Mary Edmonia Lewis
   

Dr. Paul Marchbanks
pmarchba@calpoly.edu