Du Bois-Washington Debate as Relevant as Ever

Class sizes are limited to 22 students. Marolla said the 43 faculty members teaching at University College are critical to the success of the program and its students.

Here is a program with 43 faculty members — an expensive commitment — geared to help insufficiently prepared students achieve success at the university.

This strikes me as money well spent. VCU’s proper priority is providing African-American students the academic support that allows them to complete their graduation requirements.  It also strikes me that anyone interested in improving the prospects of African-Americans in Virginia should be focusing on substantive issues like on-time graduation instead of politically potent but ultimately trivial issues such as those articulated by the VCU student protesters.

What we’re seeing played out in the modern American campus is a reprise of the old debate between Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Bois more than a century ago. Where should African-Americans focus their energy: upon education and self-improvement or advancing a civil rights agenda? Du Bois won that debate, resulting in sweeping and much-needed civil rights reforms in the 1960s. Economic gains for poor African-Americans since then have been limited, but African-American political and thought leaders have shown relatively little interest in revisiting core assumptions in light of new conditions. White micro-aggressions and insufficient support for campus cultural institutions aren’t what’s holding back African-Americans today, either at VCU or society at large. Low graduation rates in high school and college are.

As PBS summarizes his thinking, Washington seems more relevant than ever: “He believed in education in the crafts, industrial and farming skills and the cultivation of the virtues of patience, enterprise and thrift. This, he said, would win the respect of whites and lead to African Americans being fully accepted as citizens and integrated into all strata of society.” That assessment may or may not have been valid in the 19th century when virulent racism was still prevalent, but it may be the best path forward for African-Americans in the 21st century when only vestiges of racism survive.

VCU’s African-American students need to ask themselves which will benefit them most: more self improvement and educational achievement or the cultivation of resentment and grievance over symbolic issues.