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

Charles Chesnutt's "The Goophered Grapevine" (1887)

1. Does Chesnutt’s employment of dialect, inflected by the local color of colloquial speech,  weaken or enrich his storytelling?
2. The narrator explains that as the older man of color who tells the tale warms to his theme, his language flows more freely, and that his story “acquire[s] perspective and coherence” (3).  Can you trace this process of refinement as the story progresses?
3. What do you make of the hair growth resulting from Aunt Peggy’s treatment of Henry?  Does this play out as low comedy, or light fun?  Does it provide an oblique commentary on the natural hair growth and characteristic stylings of African Americans?
4. Is Mr. Dugal affected by bewitching in this tale?
5. Does Charles Chesnutt appear to validate or mock the goophered tale at the heart of his story, and those whose self-interest would lead them to spontaneously spin such tales?

P. L. Dunbar's "We Wear the Mask" (1897)

1. identify the lie perpetuated by the narrator and his kin, and the cost of this lie.
2. are the tongues and lips of those who wear the mask as complicit in this ongoing act of deception as are their eyes and cheeks?
3. who benefits from such ongoing subterfuge?
4. why does the observer--the world--take the mask for the real thing?
5. does Dunbar's poem seek succor in the same Divine source to which the narrators of Hopkins' dark sonnets turn?
6. to what might the "clay" of line thirteen refer?

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 Black 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