Reckoning with Race. Gene Dattel
Black cultural influence is part and parcel of this evaluation process, but the acceptance of Western standards is crucial. Without acknowledging the broader implications of behavioral norms, no policy proposal or specific blueprint for addressing educational inadequacies will be effective, and no alternative has been proffered.
Few of these issues affect those at the pinnacle of black society, where undeniably important and beneficial change has occurred. Opportunities never before possible are now available for those African Americans who have an enabling education. Unfortunately, upper- and middle-class black communities have not been able to influence the large black underclass.
The separatist tendency toward racial self-segregation will prevent large numbers of blacks from scaling the economic ladder. Efforts to establish race-based economic self-sufficiency have not brought broad prosperity to any group. Demonizing Western civilization also impedes assimilation and economic prosperity. The ever quotable Malcolm X inadvertently praised the Western economic model; in 1965 he advised a black church in Rochester, New York, that blacks were moving to England and France because of the “high standard of living” there. The same applies to the United States. Freedom and a high standard of living are products of Western civilization. It is now fully accessible to all who make concessions to assimilation in a nation that holds values more important than race.
One of the many fulfilling aspects of writing is the exchange of ideas with others over a long period of time. I have been duly blessed with the thoughts, experiences, insights, and criticisms of many people. It is the historian’s pleasure to become acquainted with words and deeds of the past and to test their relevance today. Equally important is the attempt to grapple with current issues and policies. Any faults in the thesis/argument of this book are solely my own. The public forums provided by my previous books, The Sun That Never Rose and Cotton and Race in the Making of America, were invaluable in gauging the reactions of live audiences to the material’s significance. Unvarnished feedback has always been central to my understanding of what was important and what was of interest.
The book’s journey owes an enormous debt to my former college professor and friend, the late Robin W. Winks at Yale. His energy, devotion to students, intellectual bandwidth, and facility with comparative history were legendary. It is to him that I owe much of my interest in and respect for racial, economic, and comparative history. My education at Yale was further enhanced by Staughton Lynd’s course in Southern history, his thoughtful approach to teaching, and his real-time experience as director of the education part of the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.
The accomplished and experienced editor Ivan R. Dee was instrumental in clarifying my ideas in a book covering a wide swath of history. Although the opinions in the book are my own, his input challenged me to “think through” the most sensitive and complicated social issue in America—race. As such, it was and continues to be a distinct privilege and pleasure to work with him.
A list of those who have made contributions over the decades would be enormous. In addition to Americans, Japanese and Europeans have enriched my perspective. My brothers, Jerry and Richard Dattel, provide support, information, and valued advice. At our college’s fiftieth reunion, my classmate Michael Dalby masterfully edited the essay that in part became the book and originated the title Reckoning with Race. Conversations with the journalist, author, and teacher Otis Sanford and attorney and civil rights leader Carver Randle Sr. are models for a respectful and vibrant interchange of ideas. I have learned much from Allan Hammons, whose creative and dedicated memorialization of Mississippi Delta cultural heritage for both civil rights and music is a model for others to follow. My publisher, Roger Kimball, has been a fount of knowledge, inspiration, and humor. He and his colleagues at Encounter Books have afforded me the freedom to tackle this evergreen topic with a deeply frank analysis. Their flexibility, guidance, and patience (read: missed deadlines) were truly appreciated.
I am grateful to Rowman & Littlefield for permission to adapt sections of my book Cotton and Race in the Making of America.
Most importantly, I thank my wife, Licia, a true partner in life and in work. Her trusted support as a wonderful editor and her generosity in spirit and in love have made the lengthy task of writing this book possible.
Racial Attitudes in the North, 1800–1865
White abolitionists “best love the colored man at a distance.”
—SAMUEL R. WARD, BLACK ABOLITIONIST, 1840S
The great fact is now fully realized that the African race here is a foreign and feeble element . . . incapable of assimilation . . . a pitiful exotic unnecessarily transplanted into our fields, and which it is unprofitable to cultivate at the cost of the desolation of the native vineyard.
—WILLIAM H. SEWARD, ANTI-SLAVERY ADVOCATE, NEW YORK GOVERNOR AND SENATOR, SECRETARY OF STATE, LINCOLN’S “RIGHT HAND,” 1860
[Free blacks] have no economy; and waste, of course, much of what they earn. They have little knowledge either of morals or religion. They are left, therefore, as miserable victims to sloth, prodigality, poverty, ignorance, and vice.
—TIMOTHY DWIGHT, PRESIDENT OF YALE UNIVERSITY, 1810
African Colonization is predicated on the principle that there is an utter aversion in the public mind, to an amalgamation and equalization of the two races; and that any attempt to press equalization is not only fruitless but injurious.
—WILBUR FISK, PRESIDENT OF WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY, 1835
[Blacks must] learn trades or starve . . . and learn not only to black boot but to make them as well.
—FREDERICK DOUGLASS, 1853
White foreigners who are, or may hereafter become residents of [Oregon] . . . shall enjoy the same rights in respect to the possession, enjoyment, and descent of property as native-born citizens.
No Negro, Chinaman, or Mulatto shall have the right of suffrage.
No free Negro, or Mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of the adoption of this constitution, shall come, reside, or be within this state, or hold any real estate, or make any contracts, or maintain any suit therein; an [sic] the Legislative Assembly shall provide by penal laws, for the removal, by public officers, of all such Negroes, and Mulattoes, and for their effectual exclusion from the state, and for the punishment of persons who shall bring them into the state, or employ, or harbor them.
—OREGON STATE CONSTITUTION, 1857 (THE BLACK EXCLUSION LAW WAS REPEALED IN 1926.)
The end of slavery in the United States did not change white attitudes toward blacks. From the early nineteenth century, when gradual emancipation began in earnest, the presence of free blacks had presented a problem for the antebellum North. From New England to California and Oregon, whites asked themselves, what shall we do with them? The overwhelming response was that blacks belonged nowhere but in the South.
Race-based slavery was a moral and economic anachronism. For the South, where slavery was implanted in large-scale staple agriculture, morality was an issue, but the advent of the tornado that was cotton gave slavery a vital economic role. In one decade, the 1830s, the South completely revised its rationalization of slavery to account for its economic benefits.
With the growth of slavery due solely to the expansion of profitable cotton agriculture came a gradual shift in the rhetoric of slavery. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the cotton and land boom of the pivotal 1830s. Nat Turner’s slave