June 25, 2003
FREDERICK DOUGLAS KNEW EVEN THEN THAT THE ROAD TO HELL FOR BLACK AMERICANS WAS PAVED WITH WHITE BENEVOLENCE
Justice Clarence Thomas began his dissenting opinion in the Michigan Law School case by quoting what Frederick Douglas told a group of abolitionists 140 years ago:
“[I]n regard to the colored people, there is always more that is benevolent, I perceive, than just, manifested toward us. What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us….I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! [Y]our doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are worm-eaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall!...And if the negro cannot stand on his own legs, let him fall also. All I ask is, give him a chance to stand on his own legs! Let him alone!...Your interference is doing him positive injury.”
Douglass's exhortation is the most important and least respected bit of wisdom ever uttered in America's national ruminations over race relations.
We are such sad sacks, some ways. We know very well that Baby won't learn to walk unless we allow him to struggle to his own feet, totter and fall a few times. Yet, outside of our own family rooms, we appear incapable of applying that lesson.
Posted by: Francis W. Porretto on June 25, 2003 08:29 AMHow true and applicable to all minorities and to nations as well. I have a deep suspicion that the help the West provided to African peoples did more harm than good.
Posted by: marek on June 26, 2003 09:54 AMFREDERICK DOUGLASS :"What I ask for the negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice. The American people have always been anxious to know what they shall do with us…." This is a great and apropos quotation and I thought Ms. Maureen Dowd's recent piece mocking Justice Thomas' opinion was disgusting, condescending, politician partisan and, I dare say racist.
I am a great believer in justice and have given much thought to the meaning of the word. Somebody always has to do the work and once upon a time in America from 1619 to about 1830 a great deal of the ECONOMICALLY significant work was done by FORCED LABOR (in the form of indentured servitude or black slavery). Though my ancestors were laborers themselves -and not on this continent- and I think it fair to say that there have been no slave owners in my family at least since the advent of Christianity. (Before than I am quite certain we had more than our share of cannibals, head-hunters and slavers since those things were part of the pagan culture of the Celtic north). Therefore, PERSONALLY, I feel no guilt over the crime of chattel slavery just the way I PERSONALLY feel no guilt about the HOLOCAUST. Nonetheless, in both instances, I feel that there is a great lesson to be learned about man's inhumanity, about man's greed, about man's selfish violent nature about man's arrogance and love of power. If one wants peace one must work for justice for as the old Highland saying goes: "the harvest of injustice is very bitter." Thomas Jefferson benefited from the economic base of the USA that was built -in what part we don't know but in significant part- upon the forced labor of chattel slaves and the obscene profits of LA TRATA, the slave trade, both internal (legal until 1865) and external (illegal but continuing). John Adams, Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln benefited, directly or indirectly, from the profits and benefits of FORCED LABOR; the entire USA benefited from these profits and benefits just the way the entire country today benefits from the labor of the huddled masses -legal and illegal- who do so much of our farm and drudge labor today. So I grant, as the first of my line born as a native American, I benefit, at least indirectly from the clearances, sufferings, efforts, strivings and exploitations of the past that helped create the USA today. As an American I feel a responsibility to others, not just myself and not just my narrow person circle. So even though I do not support the legal monster that Affirmative Action has become today, I understand the quest for equity and for justice that caused this program to be enacted in the first place. I have had many, many students get free rides because of athletic scholarships and because of race-based scholarships and preferences. I have never begrudged them their luck because even if one has every advantage one still has to carry the ball one's self and ultimately much (BUT NOT ALL) of the responsibility for the success of a person comes from the inside. True success is earned or it is not success. True knowledge is learned, or it is not true. Life experience is burned into the soul, heart and mind or it has not been lived, learned and fully appreciated. I have said it, and I have said it many times, what is earned by merit, by dint of consistent intellectual effort and the sweat of one's brow fills us with a satisfaction that the freeloader and the prince and the privileged heir can never know. Those who do not struggle and strive on their own remain, I fear, somewhat immature, somewhat soft, somewhat dependent and ultimately fragile in their self-esteem. What would they do if they wealth and privilege were gone? The striver, the survivor fears not the wolf, nor the sea nor the morning nor the dark night that will encompass us all. He just does what he always has done and begins again with courage and with strength and thanks God that he is alive and that there is work to do. And he has knowledge that even if all that he earned has been lost, if all his successes proved in the end to be bottomless and empty, that he can endure and carry on because life has left him strong. Others will fold and run but the honest striver and fighter will not and in my opinion such men (and women) will always leave their mark and achieve a certain sense of pride and level of glory that the privileged can never know.
Perhaps feminists will claim that woman's work in this time was FORCED LABOR as well and perhaps there are some who will claim that domestic work is STILL FORCED LABOR though as I have told my students many times, echoing Lincoln, who would change places with the (black) slave? Today everyone wants to get on the victim bandwagon but no group -not even the American Indian- can be said to have suffered as long as the American blacks. I say American blacks because even American blacks seem to recognize that Latin American blacks never seemed to have had it as bad for numerous historical. In fact because of the Latin American connection there never was any Black slavery in California and by 1860 more than HALF of the FREEDMEN (and women) of the USA lived in Louisiana. As Thomas Sowell has written recently in that fringe area of the Latin American world the color-line was quite different from South Carolina and point of fact not all the slaves were owned by "white" (European) Americans but also by blacks (Creoles) themselves.
When it comes to the exploitation of youth and labor one will find that few on the top are totally clean. That was true then and it is true today when the dishwashers and field workers only a few miles from where I write in the shade of my quiet palms are toiling. Most if not all in some venues are undocumented laborers from Mexico and Central America. As I said, someone always has to do the work and those who work hardest and cheapest will always be in demand. As an American, I feel very privileged indeed just to be living in this time and place and frankly I would not change places, despite moments of romantic nostalgia, with any other generation anywhere in any time.
Philosophically I accept the ascendancy and advantages of others some of whom have been earned their way by talent, hard work and genius. I accept the ascendancy of others who have used the “old Affirmative Action” of palanca (alumni connections) youth, sex appeal and beauty to rise. I accept the ascendancy of others who have had a key to another ‘fast-track’ of privilege and preference denied to me. In this life many things have been denied to me in life and in love ; I am happy for the many blessings I been given and for the helping hands I have received and the small encouragements and the true love and true friendships and great joys I have known in small things, and great books.
Yes, I can accept many things, many realities. Long ago I had to accept that as the son of a foreigner I would never be an insider for the simplest thing like making my High School baseball team, a thing I wanted more than anything in the world when I was 15 years old. Yes, I can live with many things, even injustice.
The quarrel over Affirmative Action will never end until it is struck down because it is unjust, disliked and distrusted by ordinary Americans who know in their hearts there can be no justice without equal treatment
We can accept, for the time being, the arrogance, and illogic , and strength –and guilt of a pampered, privileged elite.
But just because I recognize the superior influence and force of this guilty elite doesn’t mean I have to be quiet and accept as settled their twisted logic which in my opinion strengthens injustice and the racial divide rather than serving to obliterate or assuage the racial hangover and archaic color-lines of a vanished past. Justice Harlan wrote a powerful unconquerable truth when he wrote that the Constitution was color-blind. A great goal of the 21st century is to attain equal justice, color-blind justice for all.
Justicia is always represented as blind because we may suppose her thoughts are wholly focused on the impartial administration of justice and equity of a cause without regard to class, color, religious or ethnic prejudice.
Addison wrote "there is no virtue so truly great…as justice."
“The just,” Aristotle wrote, “is the lawful and the fair…we call those laws just that tend to produce and preserve happiness and its components for the political society.” Good laws and good government serve the common good. The meaning of justice applies to all citizens –to all members of a society equally- or there is no equality!
“Justice”, Socrates declared, is concerned ‘not with the outward man, but with the inward self, with is the true self and concernment of men; for the just man does not permit the several elements in him to interfere with one another, or any of them to do the work of others –he sets in order his own inner life…”
The nation and the soul in which justice resides is one of interior peace and spiritual health and shines with the well-being of happiness. A just nation will be a peaceful nation and a united nation. I grant that those who disagree with me believe they are serving the common good and justice according to their lights.
Of course, I have suffered things in this life as my forefolk before me suffered many things but in the final analysis I have come to know it is better to suffer injustice than to inflict it and best of all to survive injustice to oppose it when feasible to endure it when it cannot be cured and above all to remember it and thus gain a magnaminity and equanimity unattainable, perhaps, by any other means.
Posted by: Ricardo Munro on June 26, 2003 04:51 PMTrue success is earned or it is not success. True knowledge is learned, or it is not true. Life experience is burned into the soul, heart and mind or it has not been lived, learned and fully appreciated. And I know, whatever befalls a man in this life, it too shall pass away.
Great cartoon seen today. Two men sipping coffee in a diner, while one has an open newspaper to the headline of how 'minorities' are still in line for affirmative action.
"OKAY, in 20 YEARS WHITES WILL BE IN THE MINORITY IN AMERICA, AND WE WILL NEED EVERY ADVANTAGE WE CAN GET."
Posted by: Carol Herman on June 26, 2003 06:22 PMIt is simply amazing how easy it is to quote ideas that tend to justify bigotry. To understand the life abd times of Frederick, it is important to read his autobiography and all of his speeches. The remark quoted by Justice Clarence Thomas were in response to the question, "What shall we do with the Negro?" Given the enslaved state of African Americans, Douglass advocated complete freedom, including the right to vote, the right to education, the right to work -- not on plantations -- but in the mainstream of American life and, in doing so, he would have the chance to "stand on his own legs." He further advised, (if you give the Negro these rights), and he cannot stand alone, then "Let him fall if he cannot stand alone..." The basic problem then -- as now -- discrimination continued and white Americans who clamor for vindication of past evils of their forebearers -- are the beneficiaries of education, wealth, and other privileges, whether they admit or not. Neither Clarence Thomas nor those who admire him can dispute this fact...Justice Clarence Thomas would not be where he is if Justice Thurgood Marshall, a real warrior in the fight for civil rights, had taken the position he did. Frederick Douglass worked in the anti-slavery movement to ensure simple justice. In our times, justice means providing equal access to higher education -- the kind that was guaranteed to President George W. Bush when he entered Yale as a mediocre student. George's father, George H.W., appointed Thomas to the Supreme Court -- as an affirmative action move...
Posted by: Wilson Lede on July 7, 2003 09:27 AMIt is simply amazing how easy it is to quote ideas that tend to justify bigotry. To understand the life abd times of Frederick, it is important to read his autobiography and all of his speeches. The remark quoted by Justice Clarence Thomas were in response to the question, "What shall we do with the Negro?" Given the enslaved state of African Americans, Douglass advocated complete freedom, including the right to vote, the right to education, the right to work -- not on plantations -- but in the mainstream of American life and, in doing so, he would have the chance to "stand on his own legs." He further advised, (if you give the Negro these rights), and he cannot stand alone, then "Let him fall if he cannot stand alone..." The basic problem then -- as now -- discrimination continued and white Americans who clamor for vindication of past evils of their forebearers -- are the beneficiaries of education, wealth, and other privileges, whether they admit or not. Neither Clarence Thomas nor those who admire him can dispute this fact...Justice Clarence Thomas would not be where he is if Justice Thurgood Marshall, a real warrior in the fight for civil rights, had taken the position he did. Frederick Douglass worked in the anti-slavery movement to ensure simple justice. In our times, justice means providing equal access to higher education -- the kind that was guaranteed to President George W. Bush when he entered Yale as a mediocre student. George's father, George H.W., appointed Thomas to the Supreme Court -- as an affirmative action move...
Posted by: Wilson Lede on July 7, 2003 09:30 AM