The race industry argument says that racism is no longer a big deal, that it is being kept alive by those who make money out of it or win votes.
Here is Rush Limbaugh in 2009:
The race industry is still around. One of my most fervent desires and wishes, I’m serious, as a human being, is that all of this racism just be over with, all this group victimization be over with, and I don’t get it, because it’s never going to end. These are tactics, these are political tactics employed by the left to secure power, and they’ll never give it up. And while they’re the ones out there practicing all this racism and groupthink and victimization, they’re blaming people like me for it. And it’s just a shame. It’s just a shame.
But it is way older than that. Here is Booker T. Washington almost a hundred years before in 1911:
There is another class of coloured people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs — partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do do not want to lose their jobs.
Are there people who make money or win votes by bringing up racism? Of course. But there are also doctors who make money out of curing diseases. While you can argue that some doctors help to create disease or find cures to things that are not true diseases, disease would not go away if all the doctors became house painters. Instead it would get far worse.
In Booker T Washington’s day it was not the “race industry”, the profitable complainers, who hung black men from trees or kept black people at the back of the bus, who kept blacks from voting; they are not the ones who kept blacks out of libraries, cinemas, hotels, restaurants and amusement parks.
Likewise today it is not the complainers, the whiners, the race card pullers, who make innocent black children go to bad schools, who help to keep blacks out of white neighbourhoods, who hire them last and fire them first, who would rather spend money keeping black men in prison than in getting them off of drugs, etc.
That a black man could make the race industry argument at the height of Jim Crow shows two things:
- A race industry does not prove that racism is just being kept alive by complainers, that if they shut up it would go away.
- That some black people can argue that racism is no big deal even when it is.
The main thing that both Booker T Washington and Rush Limbaugh leave out is that they themselves make their living by defending an unjust society as just.
Thanks to commenter Great White Man for bringing the Booker T Washington quote to my attention.
See also:
- Crying racism
- Of Limbaugh and Lowery
- How to argue like a white racist
- Jim Crow
- Blacks who argue that racism is no big deal:
Wow. Those quotes are like…wow. B.T. Washington…wow. And your analogy about doctors is good. I really don’t have anything productive to say. I was just a little surprised that there are people saying this. Just wow.
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abagond good post, i hope i didn’t offend you with any of my comments… 🙂
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Way to go,Abagond! I’m so sick and tired of people saying that racism is over when there are so many incidents happening out there as I’m typing this response. So much for so-called post-racial Americal.
Thanks for this post, Abagond.
La Reyna
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i love you abagond! you’re still one of my favorite bloggers
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I believe that racism is still around, no matter how long it has been there are still people around who are racist and as long as they atre teaching their children about their beliefs people will still be racist.
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I think racism stems from a deep seated and unresolved collective fear of some kind, maybe collective guilt. It will never go away until the guilt is addressed and exorcised. And that’s my pseudo-psychoanalysis for today!
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i despise rush limbaugh and his “female” counterpart ann coulter.
i find it ironic in limbaugh’s statement that he is saying he hates the whole “blaming thing” yet he sits there and in a hypocritical way blames the left for everything!
i just can’t believe millions of americans are really that dumb to believe half the things that come from that man’s mouth.
and the last sentence of your blog is sooo true. its annoying how people try to make this country sound so just when its not, of course it may look just to you pending on your skin color or how much money you have or where you live etc.
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The roots run deep and for the past couple of hundred years, we’ve only been cutting the top part of the plant. We’ve been patting ourselves on our collective backs for finally defeating racism, until another reminder that the roots are still there, shoots up.
This country needs some gardening lessons, and Rush is definitely not one to go to for teaching them (apparently Booker T. wasn’t either).
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Abagond you are just smart enough to be dangerous. You are smart enough to quote BTW out of context and fail to give the ignorant the full measure of what Booker T. Washington was able to accomplish, not for whites but for black people.
I bet you did not know that when he arrived at Tuskegee there was nothing there, he was able to lead that community and students to build that great institution from nothing.
Did you know that in 1905 24 years after its start, Tuskegee produced more millionaires that Harvard Yale & Princeton combined? I should not have to say this but considering the abounding ignorance I feel compelled’ BLACK millionaires.
Washington spoke out against lynching, for equality in the vote, and for the uplift of the black race. He raised millions for the educations of black students not only at Tuskegee, but also for Howard, Fisk and several other HBCUs.
To try and make him a sell out and associate hm with Rush Limbaugh is just over the top and makes his words ring even truer than ever. Shame on you.
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That’s why it’s so important to study our historical leaders. It’s hard when we do a quick research on Wiki for some basic info. I’ve been guilty of that myself. I don’t think it’s fair to compare anyone to Limbaugh!
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what booker t washington said is kinda like what bill cosby said a few years ago. which i personally agree with bill cosby’s criticisms…not so much booker’s considering the time period.
but i’d listen to booker’s criticms’ more than limbaughs anyday because only black people should be criticizing the black race like that. it just doesn’t sound right when it comes from the mouths of the race thats been doing the oppressing since day one.
now the real problem is that whenever a democratic/liberal black person does try to address some of the problems prevalent within the black race they get blasted for not being PC about it(meaning that the person with the criticisms isn’t taking into account those that are not the problem).
i dunno, as much as i am for wanting to make whites stop being racist, i still think that it doesn’t help the cause when there are prevalent problems within our racial community…i mean sometimes i feel its wrong for people to say that blacks shouldnt use the slave argument…but i also feel like it is dumb to use it because it really shouldn’t affect you personally in this moment. i can understand where both sides are coming from.
i kinda wish every race in this country would just fix the problems within their own race.
i don’t think anyone probably gets what i am saying or where i am trying to get at with it. but i figured id take a shot at it.
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The Booker T quote was copied and pasted from Wikiquote, so it could be out of context. I can buy that. But on the other hand he did make his peace with an unjust society a little too easily and for that the white world thanked him.
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I think what Booker T. Washington was saying is that White people enjoyed having Black people out there bringing up “grievances” because it kept reinforcing the false reality that blacks were a lower class of society.
It’s like that part in Invisible Man when one of the White benefactors of the school drives through a part of town where he meets Trueblood and gives him a 100 dollars after hearing his tale of woes. There is a secret pleasure that the oppressing class has over the class they are oppressing when they hear how bad it is. That way, they (the oppressor) gives money or help, they can feel as if they are doing good and taking away what they see as the problem.
Booker T. Washington was about creating an economic power base in the area where blacks had established a knowledge of the land. WEB Dubois leaned more to the “Talented Tenth” philosophy where he thought the best and brightest should go North, learn what they had to, the come and uplift the rest.
The country went with DuBois – not sure it was the right choice.
The even say the words of Rush to Booker T is taking words to suit an argument.
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What BTW said and which is still true today is that there are race pimps who make a good living at it. Jesse Jackson was able to become wealthy and his family by race hustling. He has blackmailed industries into giving him payola to stay off his “racist list.” Al Sharpton is another one. Michael Erick Dyson, Julian Malveux and a few others are further down the rung but do the same thing. Dyson got much publicity when he went after Bill Cosby.
BTW, was not an accommodationsist, he was a visionary. What he was saying is that black people do not need to live among whites or hang with them socially to succeed. They need to be treated with respect and allowed to have the law apply to them as the same as it does to whites.
Please I beg you to read the Atlanta Cotton States and International Exposition Speech in its entirety. It was a blessing and a curse speech and a prophetic one. He laid it out as to what would happen if whites did not work to see the education and uplift of all. He also laid it out there, what would happen if black folks did not did not do their part to live responsibly. He predicted that “those of a foreign birth” would steal our birthright. Hmmm, was he ever right.
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Canal Pub,
Good point, especially the last part.
Check out the first two chapters of-
The Negro Problem
Click to access TheNegroProblem6x9.pdf
Here one can read BTW, & Du Bois in context and judge between their philosophies of education.
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A lot of Blacks went with Booker T. only to have their fruits burned down to the ground, then in the twentieth century the scourge of urban renewal.
It really was not the conflict we so like to make about Black people of the past. Not many Negroes were able to go to college and those that did and stayed in the south found the only way to survive was to be an entrepreneur.
Either path you followed put you out of place and that is the worst that could happen. An uppity Negro; be it a successful businessman or highly educated one could not be tolerated.
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Hathor,
You are either the innocent victim of poor historical education, or are purposely trying to change facts.
Those Black folks who followed BTW’s track did not have their fruits burned to the ground. It s quite the contrary. BTW, warned against urbanizing saying that land ownership, business and industry (ownership)were the way to go.
Until the early 1960 there was a very vibrant Black middle class. This was destroyed by the Du Bois radical integrationist fervor. White water is sweeter, their ice is colder, their clothes are nicer and their groceries are somehow better. Where we used to buy from one another we now bought from the white man but remained ghettoized. We took the money from our communities and spent it in the white communities robbing ourselves of that stimulus.
With regard to burning, let me remind you that the burning in the 60s was exclusively done by Black Folks to blck folks.
Please get your history and facts right. This is one of the tragedies of the past few generations of Black folks, they are being fed and believing incorrect information.
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Eddie Huff,
In some ways I was speaking metaphorically, but the Black business district of Memphis was destroyed and the successful community of Tulsa, OK. There were other race riots that targeted the Black communities long before you were ever born and it was not Black folk burning either.
And during the fifties and the early sixties, Urban renewal destroyed more Black business districts and cohesive communities than any riots did. You forget that the Black community is more than just a few cities.
But don’t let the facts get in the way of your revisionist history.
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Hathor,
Excuse me but I live in Tulsa, OK, know the people and facts and did not just read about it. When I spoke I was using Tulsa as reference.
Contrary to popular believe integration destroyed the black community, not the race riot of 1921. The Greenwood district was rebuilt into an even more vibrant economy after 1921. When black people could begin shopping in and patronizing white establishments it killed the black business community.
Besides Urban Renewal was the brain child of the same people who came up with busing and many of the policies that devastated the black community and it was not the “Right Wing.”
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Eddie Huff,
Regardless if Tulsa was rebuilt that doesn’t negate the fact that it was burnt down. I did know that it was rebuilt.
I was blaming the right wing for Urban Renewal, but it was part of the highway expansion program started by Eisenhower’s administration. and many years in the early seventies it was seen as a way to remove Blacks. The whites, both stripes, here in Philly in the new neighborhood were even intent upon destroying the oldest Black church in America and the second oldest in Philadelphia, so they could secure more white housing. They even tried to destroy and elderly Black lady’s house to get her to move out. This development was associated with the completion of a highway.
What I am trying to say is that whether or not which path you followed there was always a conscious effort to push you back. For some it was something impossible to overcome. There is a documentary about the Watts riot that give an in depth description of what happens. It also speaks on the decline of the area after the Areospace industry left. Manufacture was the stalwart of most American communities. Not everybody can be a merchant. Meaningful work that is equitably rewarded is what maintains a community.
I was born in 1945, live in the south and my dad had a business until I was a junior in high school. He was Democrat who truly believed in Washington’s creed. So I know that Washington’s philosophy was not thought as solely belonging to the Republicans like they are trying to claim now.
I think you read my first comment with myopic lenses.
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You really don’t know what you are talking about. The history of Urban renewal goes way back 19th Century England and really has nothing to do with Conservatives.
I too lived in Philly. First in the projects on Poplar St, then later in West Oak Lane by Lasalle. We moved out of the Projects where Urban Renewal rebuilt the center of Philly but to a much nicer home in North Philly.
In Tulsa, North Tulsa (black section)is still North Tulsa. Urban Renewal did not happen here until 5 years ago and it missed North Tulsa. those residents are upset at that.
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Eddie Huff,
I made a typo at the beginning of my post. I meant to say that “I was not blaming the right wing for Urban Renewal”
I know that it matters not, because I have to be wrong and you have to be right, even about my own life experiences and knowledge.
I could if I wanted, give proper citations for the facts I have given, but some would cost me money, like getting the articles for Mother Bethel AME. I could quibble about our definitions of urban renewal as defined in the US, but your argument here is that I have challenged you.
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Abagond,
It would be nice to have a preview feature.
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Abagond, thanks for the note..
I believe you commented on being “color blind” is a myth..
Unfortunately that is the only way to move foward.
Treat people as they treat you…Do not label “black” or “white” people..Judge on the individuality of the person….let his actions label the man.
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@Great White Man
On the colourblind thing people use misuse that way of thinking when they say stuff like “I don’t see you as black, I see you as a regular person.” which is just silly on so many levels
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Great White Man,
to say one does not see color is like talking to a fat person, and not realizing they are fat. Now that does not mean that I do not like that “fat” person or that they may not be brilliant or able to do great things, they are still fat and we all know it.
Biggie Smalls was fat, Fat Joe was fat. They accomplished great things but they were still fat. As long as we try to play these “Imagine” games we lose.
Which takes us back to the initial discussion of Booker T. Washington’s saying black people do not need white people to accept them socially. They just need to respect us for what we can do. Which is anything anyone else can do, when we try.
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Hi,
I think part of the confusion also stems from the wrong belief that racism equals racial prejudice. It is not because some liberal middle-class people have lost their racial prejudices that racism is over. Racism is a structural problem in society. As long as blacks are overrepresented in prison, in poverty statistics, in unemployment, etc., we live in a racist society, a society where a baby born in a black household has on average less opportunities. Affirmative action does not tackle the root of the problem, but masks it. Affirmative action has created a black elite and it allow people who want to let the racist system intact claim: see, there is no racism anymore, because you have black professors, black Congressmen and even a mixed black-white president…
Kind regards,
Taoufiq
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Booker T Washington was one of the biggest UNCLE TOM in America.
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