The Vision of Social Reform and Racial Justice - Case Study Example

Order 613989 While seemingly opposites in many ways, Jane Addams and Booker T. Washington have some similarities. One, of was their overall mission to advance society and move Americans to a higher plain of equality. Another characteristic they share is their approach to this progressive advancement of society. Both seemed to be compromisers, seeing that radical and forceful pressure often repels rather than attracts, although they each manifested that in different ways. For their ability to see the world with an open-mind, a spirit of compromise, Addams and Washington are often described negatively as conciliatory and contradictory. However, perhaps in the light of the times and the radical social changes the two foresaw, their actions may have been shrewdly calculated. Addams and Washington saw the vision of social reform and racial justice as a game with very high stakes, one where “going for broke” could be disastrous. Both saw the best path to an equal society better won by negotiating the deal. Perhaps, the very actions that many have criticized Addams and Washington for, were calculating moves in a complicated contest. Addams, a middle-class white woman with a liberal college education, paid for by her parents, established Hull House in Chicago in the same way that many settlement houses for the poor were instituted. There was a need for relief in a poverty stricken area, she was educated and capable, and she had people to back her. On the surface, it seemed very much like the myriad of progressive social “projects” common to the era. However, for Addams it was a mission of ambiguity because of the method rather than the inspiration. The idea of “spreading the wealth” appealed to her, but the original settlement house, on which the settlement houses in the United States were modeled, Toynbee Hall, had opened in London’s East End by Oxford graduates looking for both a way to relieve the utter destitution and also to make useful the liberal education they had been fortunate enough to acquire. Their idea was to spread culture and education and by doing this they would bring the poor and unfortunate up out of the darkness of deprivation because they would no longer be deprived of knowledge. Knowledge, to this crowd, translated into culture and some sort of social transcendence. For Addams, the purpose of Hull House was similar on the outside—a place for the poor and deprived to have their needs met and to be enlightened by not only the benevolence, but also the knowledge and culture bestowed upon them, which would lead them out of the darkness of despair into the light of happiness and social worth. However, for Addams personally it seemed circuitous and self-indulgent. The settlement house in general, based on the ideal of Toynbee Hall, was “an attempt to relieve, at the same time, the overaccumulation at one end of society and the destitution at the other; but it [the settlement house] assumes that this overaccumulation and destitution is most sorely felt in the things that pertain to social and educational privileges” (Addams 86) . The “overaccumulation” often took the form of high regard for one’s self and for the useless knowledge amassed during the obtaining of a liberal arts degree. That poor, destitute people actually would value that seemed ridiculous to Addams. When she visited Europe, she encountered some of the worst conditions she had ever seen. In them she saw “a sense of futility, of misdirected energy, the belief that the pursuit of cultivation would not in the end bring either solace or relief” (Addams 51). To Addams, it seemed that the settlement house trend was more of a way for many to make use of their ineffectual education more so than a way to actually benefit society. Yet, she ran Hull House for decades. Addams’ way of rationalizing her extended involvement in a social movement to alleviate poverty, what she thought was more a calculated method on the part of the liberally educated social progressives to promote their agenda than an actual attempt to change the issues that caused the conditions, was to operate within the system—to play the game—to achieve her goals. Chris Bilton points out that one of the differences Addams was able to exploit to her advantage was that Toynbee Hall had been established by men. In the United States, the socially progressive movements were mainly products of the efforts of women. “The inspiration behind Hull House was not a faith in culture, but a crisis of faith . . . extended not just to the urban poor, but to the college-educated young woman. The settlement would provide the necessary outlet for [Addams’] active faculties by applying her skills to real social problems. . . .While the residents of Toynbee Hall were all men, the American settlement movement was dominated by college women who (according to Addams) shared her more ambiguous relationship to their own cultural legacy” (Bilton 139). The difference between the two approaches was clearly a product of acculturation. The men who had established Toynbee Hall lived in a society that expected them to do something in life. Even if they were wealthy, perhaps especially if they were wealthy, and had not real reason to earn money, they should find a purpose. Women of the same society really had no purpose other than to raise children, run the house, and be the moral arbiter of the man. In American society, while the dominating mythology of hard work and “the pioneer spirit” precluded some of the pretense that English society placed on the role of women, much of the same cultural expectations existed. However, American women had taken the initiative, keeping with the American notion of the pioneer spirit, and had stepped to the forefront of social change by arguing for prohibition, but framing it as an argument for protection for them and their children. In this way, they played the patriarchal game by appealing to the male ego’s desire to protect women. Conciliatory by today’s standards, the method achieved its purpose and resulted in women eventually winning the right to vote. Addams’ agenda for Hull House was in the same vein of compromise. She wanted to achieve certain things, but the only way she could do so was to play inside the patriarchal social context, so she managed to do this by opening a settlement house that seemed just like the myriad of others that opened in the same era. Addams changed Hull House from the standard settlement house, that sought to teach the poor some idealized version of culture, to a source of affirmation largely for the immigrant. Since immigrants made up a good portion of the poor in inner city Chicago, Addams worked mainly with them. She believed ultimately education was the key to alleviating poverty, but she did not think that teaching some idealized version of culture was what education should entail. Instead she promoted integration of cultures as a way for immigrants to happily assimilate into American culture. To assist in this assimilation, Addams thought that education should be something that each person could access equally and that it should include equal dissemination of culture. ”In Addams’ description of socialized education, she describes education as a process of exchange between cultures and implicitly distances herself from the cultural idealism of the English settlement house” (Bilton 142). Surely this caused many Americans to view Addams suspiciously. On one hand, she advocated education for everyone which the progressive liberals could get behind because it pushed their agenda of an idealized education. On the other hand, she also promoted the belief that there was no ideal in education, but that it was more of a sharing, a compromise in the game of life, where everybody brought something to the table and left it, but also took something new away. No one quite understood that. No one quite understood Booker T. Washington’s philosophy either. He, like Addams, was not the typical educated American. Born a slave, he had worked and saved his money and then walked 200 miles to go to a college that would allow a black man to attend. He earned his degree and then set about trying to better the African American’s place in society. When he started out, he had the power of the Reformation and the Freedman’s Society at his back. Both of those institutions were all about compromise so Washington fit right in with their agenda. However, once Jim Crow became the established agenda in the south, Washington’s conciliatory ways were looked on with suspicion by his own people and as a way to prevent full societal assimilation of blacks by white people. Yet, Washington saw his methods as a way to stay within the structure of the rules that society had laid down, as a way to successfully play the game. Because he was a black man in a white dominated racist society, Washington’s conciliatory manner must have looked contradictory to both black and white alike. David Sehat says, “His larger collaboration with the postwar civilizing mission of the North, and his contradictions were not a unique feature of his personality or leadership style but a common characteristic of a system of rule that relied on indigenous intermediaries” (328). Washington played the dual role of ambassador for both groups like a double agent. Blacks accustomed to being cheated feared Washington would compromise their rights to gain only small concessions from the white power machine that controlled the possibility of economic advancement for black and white alike. A modern day analogy exists in the current banking and loan climate: banks have the capital to loan money, but they do not want to and they have a list of several reasons none of them very good considering the role they played in the crisis. In Washington’s day, the list of reasons may have differed, but probably not by much. Assuredly, at the top of the list of the financiers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century was whether or not the social and political climate favored the person requesting money, whether or not his prospects looked good. After the establishment of Jim Crow in the south, black people had neither social nor political favor and few prospects. Washington knew this and realized that rather than demanding change, he had to make black people look more like a pragmatic investment to those who held the purse strings. Unfortunately, after the speech in Atlanta, which W.E.B. DuBois dubbed the “Atlanta Compromise,” some black people lost faith in Washington’s methods. They could not understand why he was not demanding a fair share of the American pie from those whites in power, but instead advocated being patient in white oppression. In Washington’s mind, he was encouraging black people to stay in the south, “cast down their buckets where they were,” and live within the social parameters offered so as not to miss the opportunity available to them in the place which they had a legitimate claim to not only by birth but by the blood, sweat and tears of they and their ancestors. His philosophy was that of self-help and accommodation. Washington wanted blacks to accept the discrimination for a while and in the meantime show whites that the black race was worthy of respect through their hard work and trustworthiness. Washington thought that blacks had been oppressed for so long by whites that they could tolerate it, and rise above it, a little longer to get what they wanted because if they did, they would prove to be the better people for it. Some have labeled Washington “Uncle Tom” for what he was trying to accomplish in this speech, but when one considers it on the basis of the contradictory situation in Washington found himself, perhaps there is another interpretation. He explains, “I was equally determined to be true to the North, as well as to the best element of the white South, in what I had to say. . . . Uppermost in my mind was the desire to say something that would cement the friendship of the races and bring about hearty cooperation between them” (Washington 201, 206). One could perhaps paraphrase Washington here by saying, “I wanted to let white people know we were willing to play by their rules, but that we can play better than whites within their rules.” Washington thought blacks would understand what was not said better than what was said, and the whites would only hear what was said. Washington walked a fine line of contradiction in his Atlanta Exposition Address. He could not come out directly and speak to the blacks in the audience. He had to assume they would interpret what he had to say differently from the way the white people in the audience interpreted it. When African Americans were slaves they were prohibited from any opportunity to socialize. Whites, who were definitely outnumbered, feared slave uprisings and escape attempts. Yet, slaves did escape and were often assisted by fellow slaves and those who sympathized with their plight. To coordinate escapes and rebellions they had to communicate, so they devised a method of “getting the word out” without their white oppressors detecting it and they did it largely right under the master’s nose. One way they accomplished this was by singing spirituals while working in the fields. One person would sing out a phrase and others would answer or repeat. Often the phrase was a coded message about when and where an escape was planned. With this long history of coding messages heard by both white and black ears, perhaps Washington assumed that the black people who heard his speech would understand that it was coded. There is no defence or security for any of us except in the highest intelligence and development of all. If/anywhere there are efforts tending to curtail the fullest growth of the Negro, let these efforts be turned into stimulating, encouraging, and making him the most useful and intelligent citizen. Effort or means so invested will pay a thousand per cent interest. These efforts will be twice blessed— “blessing him that gives and him that takes.” (Washington 210-211) What Washington was saying to the black people in the audience to hear is impossible to say for sure, but perhaps something like: “We have proven ourselves to be more intelligent, strong, and stalwart. We can outlast these foolish white people, beat them at their own game, play along and eventually have what they have.” Obviously he could not have voiced this in plain speak to a mixed audience, so he had to rely on his fellow blacks to interpret what he was conveying to them. “Washingtons speech took its meaning in large part from the hardening southern racial policies, and he equivocated so that different members of the audience could hear what they wanted.” He cautioned black people not to “forget that ‘we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labour, and put brains and skills into the common occupations of life.’ To his southern white listeners, he urged beneficence and tolerance, while assuaging their concern for social mixing” (Sehat 347). Unfortunately, not every black person who heard him understood the code. Washington adapted to an extremely limited social and political environment using conciliatory tactics and even though many of his own people disagreed with his method, he was successful as a leader of black people in many ways especially at being able to respond to the constantly volatile and changing atmosphere of the south at the time. After the Atlanta speech, both black and whites had opinions about the speech. Whites were satisfied that Washington did not overstep the boundaries placed on a black man in society and pretty much went on their merry racist ways. Some African Americans understood what Washington was driving at, understood the rules of the game, and had, along with Washington, figured out a way to win by following the rules and triumphing over their opponents by being better at their game. Other African Americans, on the other hand, like DuBois thought Washington conceded too much. They were not willing to play by the rules established by the dominant group in society. Granted, they were difficult rules to follow, but perhaps had they played the game then, the present may have looked differently for a vast number of poverty stricken, inner city, imprisoned, drug addicted, and/or generally socially oppressed African Americans of today. Both Addams and Washington were members of a marginalized societal group who had by hard work and good fortune found themselves in a position to help others. Addams wanted to help others both in her own marginalized group and in other groups she saw equally as marginalized. She wanted the opportunities to be more equally distributed and the contributions equally respected. The same could be said for Washington. He too wanted equal opportunities for his own race without diminishing the opportunities for the white race. Their desire for equality required that both Addams and Washington concede to some of the contradictions that must have plagued them. Yet, both remained true to the vision of an equal society for all races and social classes. They saw this accomplished by navigating within the established mores and methods already in place. They both chose to compromise and urge compliance to the establishment to bring about peaceful change. Works Cited Addams, Jane. Twenty Years at Hull House with Autobiographical Notes. Urbana, IL: U of Illinois P, 1910, 1990. Bilton, Chris. "Knowing Her Place: Jane Addams, Pragmatism and Cultural Policy." International Journal of Cultural Policy 12.2 (2006): 135-150. Carroll, Rebecca. Uncle Tom or New Negro? : African Americans Reflect on Booker T. Washington and Up from Slavery 100 Years Later. Westminster, MD: Harlem Moon, 2006. Sehat, David. "The Civilizing Mission of Booker T. Washington." The Journal of Southern History LXXII.2 (2007): 323-362. Read More