Book Review
Up From Slavery
By Booker T. Washington
So
today, I finally finished reading “Up from slavery”. Did it make me go
“hallelujah”? No. Did it make me feel like I could now go out and change the
world? Not particularly. But, that does not take anything away from the
inspirational quality of the book.
Booker
T. Washington was born into slavery. The whole time I was reading the book this
fact kept replaying itself in my head. He was born a slave. He had no surname,
and some would even argue no “real” name considering that Booker was a
nickname. He grew up eating pork fat and cornbread as a daily meal, and
considering a tablespoon of molasses on a Sunday as a “treat”. From an early
age he worked first in the salt mines of West Virginia, then in the coal mines.
He didn’t learn to read except by forcing himself and then finally convincing
his father to let him split his time between the mines and the classroom. And
by his death he was president of the preeminent African American university in
the US.
As
much as I don’t agree with a lot of his politics – I do see a discernable
apologist thread in his line of thinking – in the context of who he was and
what he came from, it would be naive of me to disregard his opinions
altogether. The factors of his youth were such a big influence on him and his
opinions, and unlike pure “thinkers” who had grown up in the relative freedom
in the North, he wore the shoes of slavery and knew very well where they
pinched. So in that sense, I think we have to forgive him some of the
apologism, because unlike these thinkers, Washington actually had to go back to
the South. And what he was trying to build in Tuskegee wasn’t just
revolutionary in the sense of being the first higher educational institution
dedicated to African American education, but reinforcing the belief in the
value of the “black man” as a contributor to the development of the South. He
wasn’t just trying to build a school. He was trying to build bridges and
rebuild communities. All of this in the shadow of one of the darkest episodes
in world History.
In
some ways, it’s probably better that Washington didn’t live to see the civil
rights era, because I think that would have undermined his whole belief in the
slow progression in the realization of rights. I think that his heart would
have broken as the lynching culture took root and it began to seem that the
walls between races in the US would never be torn down. It would have
threatened his credibility if he had to either abandon his credentials or his
personal doctrine, or to stick to it in the face of so much suffering and
injustice in the South.
The
lesson from Booker T. Washington for me is that actions do in fact speak louder
than words. It’s easy to preach freedom and revolution from the comfort of my
room in Oxford, but I really love his policy where he says that he would never
say anything in the North that he wouldn’t say in the south. That’s really what
African thinkers really need to get to grips with. The Ngugi wa Thiong’o's of
this world need to get back to the place where they are backing up their random
ideas with actions, and being prepared to lose their lives to stand by their
convictions. It also says to me that we need more “homegrown” revolutionaries.
We need more people who know where the shoe pinches to stand up and say
something. But that’s another story for another day.
The
reality, I think, for any revolution, is somewhere in between being prepared to
compromise and pull back, and saying “screw it”. Don’t threaten force unless
you’re prepared to use it. But don’t use force unless you have to. A revolution
made up entirely of thinkers or doers is destined to fail.
All
in all, a good read.
