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Heirs of the Wizard

Black discourse over what the Negro should do has a complex history of competing ideas, with the themes of separation vs. integration gaining and losing favor across class lines and generations. This can be seen in, among other things, the differing positions adopted by the hierarchy of the A.M.E. church and Frederick Douglass on black participation in the Civil War, the W. E. B. Dubois dispute with Booker T. Washington over the franchise, and, most recently, black discussion of affirmative action. To understand the current prominence of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, and Walter Williams, we have to look first at their ideological forefather, Booker T. Washington. In the aftermath of Reconstruction, Washington and many of his contemporaries concluded that political activity by blacks was a mistake. The lesson these black men drew from postbellum politics was that political participation by Negroes did not pay. If blacks were going to succeed in America the argument went, they would have to rehabilitate their community and show their white peers that the "race" possessed the "right stuff. " "The wisest among my race understand that the agitation of questions of social equality is the extremist folly," Washington said, "and that progress in the enjoyment of all privileges that will come to us must be the result of severe and constant struggle rather than of artificial forcing." Washington was the spokesman for black America during a time of