Chelsea Bruce
Dr. Martin
POSC438-010
10 October 2016
POSC 438: Exam I Essay
There can be no question about race and class being major issues and topics in the history of America. America began as a country based on class and race — there were property owners, indentured servants, and there were slaves. Eventually, the colonies decided to break with England, however, it did not break with slavery. African-American slaves helped build the economic foundations of the new nation. There was a collective belief in the inferiority of non-white races. This belief then evolved in Jim Crow laws that segregated the races and prompted the Plessy v. Ferguson case. However, the sentiment began to change with Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois who by the early 20th century were the two most influential black men in the country.
This essay will begin by talking about Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois. Then it will discuss the Declaration of Independence and its major tenets. Throughout the essay there will be spotlights on specific articles discussed in class and how they related to the Declaration of Independence.
Booker T. Washington was born into slavery in Virginia, but eventually went on to graduate from Hampton Institute and become a teacher. He went on to teach at the Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in Alabama which was a vocational school for African Americans to teach them how to be successful in the Industrial world. He believed that economic independence and the ability to show themselves as productive members of society would eventually lead blacks to true equality, and that they should for the time being set aside any demands for civil rights. His ideas were readily accepted by both blacks who believed in the practical rationality of his approach, and whites who were more than happy to defer any real discussion of social and political equality for blacks to a later date. It was, however, referred to by its derogatory name the “Atlanta Compromise” by its critics and W.E.B. DuBois was among them.
DuBois was also a black man who believed in education for the African American population. However, unlike Booker T. Washington, he was born in Massachusetts to a free-black family and he went on to be the first black man to complete his Ph.D at Harvard University. Therefore, DuBois and Washington had a difference of opinion in some areas. DuBois believed that education in conjunction with civil rights were the only way for African Americans to gain equality, while Washington did not believe in immediate civil rights issues. The country came to understand these beliefs after years of conditioned and massaged thought.
Many were taught that the United States of America began as a result of the opportunity for religious freedoms in the New World. Religious groups, such as the Puritans and pilgrims, sought to establish their religion in a new land, away from the tumultuous political climate and dangerous religious conflict in England. However, the main reason for the colonies’ colonization was England’s unstable economy. As inflation and poverty grew, English immigrants chose to seek out new sources of economic prosperity in the New World. Many of these colonists were sought to begin their new life in the colonies, where capitalism had made the ventures of growing sugar, tobacco and cotton promisingly profitable ventures. From the first colony to the last slavery was widely used and practiced. Slavery was practiced throughout the American colonies in the 17th and 18th centuries and continued to be used once America gained its freedom from Great Britain.
The Declaration of Independence was adopted by Congress on July 4, 1776 and publicly announced the decision of the American colonies to declare themselves free and independent states. The Declaration also defines the conditions of legitimate political authority, the ends of government, and the sovereignty of the people. It gave government secured rights to its people.
At the time of the Founding, people spoke of rights as being natural. First of all, natural inalienable rights do not come from government. Governments only secure these rights, that is, they create the political conditions that allow one to exercise them. As a result, whereas natural rights such as life, liberty, and property are rights that government protects from infringement by others, human rights such as “housing” and “leisure” are often things that government is obligated to provide. Secondly, natural rights do not change over time. All men, at all times, have the same right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The right to property is the natural right to acquire, own, and use property. Property rights form not only the basis for a free market economy, but also for republican self-government, deeply intertwined as they are with human liberty. To be free is to exert one’s talents in the pursuit of happiness, and property rights are a fundamental requirement for securing the just rewards of one’s labor. Property was seen as a source of opportunity. Therefore, slaves were seen as property since they were a source of opportunity that allowed people to create wealth and raise their standard of living.
For years there has been a struggle in America about what is acceptable with regards to race and slavery. A vocal slavery advocate, George Fitzhugh gave public lectures and engaged in lively debates with northern abolitionists on slavery. He was convinced that slavery was a rightful, necessary form of labor and that southern blacks should stay enslaved. Fitzhugh also considered the North’s failure to address the breakdown of northern social and economic systems, as an admission of guilt or a concession revealing the “truth” of proslavery arguments.
In 1807, Fitzhugh’s essay Cannibals All! Or, Slaves without Masters was published. Fitzhugh charts “productive” classical and historical accounts of slavery and cites the Bible as evidence. Fitzhugh likewise presents the poor working and factory class conditions in England as evidence that the southern institution of slavery, modeled after a pre-capitalist, feudal society, is economically justifiable. Furthermore, he argues capitalism, as practiced in Europe and the North, produces a form of “moral cannibalism,” replicating the master/slave dichotomy by turning capitalists into masters and free laborers into exploited slaves. Within a capitalist society, the very labor and skill extracted in pursuit of profit enslaves these workers, leaving them far more disenfranchised than their slave counterparts. Fitzhugh believes that capitalism encourages falsehood and hypocrisy, impedes scientific modifications of supply to meet demand, demeans labor’s value and nobility, and results in the greater impoverishment of already poor peoples while augmenting the wealth of the affluent. According to Fitzhugh, under the humane code of “southern paternalism” in which masters labor on behalf of their enslaved workers, African American slaves are happy and free; enjoying those comforts and necessities granted them under a supportive system and community.
According to grammar school social studies teachers across the country the Founders believed that blacks and whites were equal and that the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence make this clear — neither document classifies people according to race. Yet, in “Superior and Inferior Races” it is obvious that Americans did not believe that blacks and whites were equal, let alone the same species. Caldwell argues that “God created not one but four original species” and that there was an inherent inferiority placed on the non-Caucasian species. This discussion became commonplace by 1850 and simultaneously Calvert started talking about phrenology, the study of the cranium as an indicator of character and mental capacity. This racialist thinking was used not only to justify slavery, but also to defend the “subordination …gulf in power and progress that separated them from the peoples they were overrunning.” Morton asserts that God created racial differences, therefore supporting superiority and inferiority between races. The Constitution does state that for purposes of representation and taxation unfree persons are to be counted as three-fifths of a free person. This portion of the Constitution contributes to the notion that blacks are subservient to whites.
The prohibition of multiracial legal identity in the states and the nation promotes the thought and practice of non-whites, specifically African Americans, being inferior. It is stated in “Historical Origins of the Prohibition of Multiracial and Legal Identity in the States and the Nation” that the country doesn’t have a legal concept of multiracial identity, furthermore, it prohibits it. Federal agencies place people into one of four racial categories: American Indian/Alaskan Native, Asian/Pacific Islander, Black, or White. Government asserts this reflects the existing societal norms and thought. Therefore, it presumes that multiracial people choose to identify in only one category. However, that is hard to believe. It is easier to believe that the prohibition of multiracial identity exists to permit a system of oppression based on ancestry and it cannot “operate in a social environment in which people recognize their multiple heritages.”
Throughout “Historical Origins of the Prohibition of Multiracial and Legal Identity in the States and the Nation” the idea of a narrow definition of white, the pure white or Caucasian race, and a broad definition of black, as any non-white race, is reoccurring. This was done to preserve the “purity of the white race.” To further the sentiment that blacks or non-whites are subordinate, the essay discusses the Plessy case and states that in the early 1900s whites who were mistaken as blacks could claim damages for any effects that could result from being seen as colored rather than white. This would make it seem as though witness is a property to be protected. Although, in Plessy v. Ferguson, Homer Adolph Plessy who is seven eighths caucasian tries to make an argument for his right to be seen as white and is denied the privileges applied to other white counterparts because of his one eighth of color. This is particularly irritating because, as said before, white people who were placed in the colored train could win damages of a few thousand dollars because whiteness is viewed as a property that could be protected by the government.
According to the Declaration of Independence, men establish governments to secure their pre-existing natural rights. The purpose of government is therefore to create the conditions that allow each individual to freely exercise his rights. Government secures rights by protecting citizens from those who might deprive them of their rights. Broadly speaking, there are three different types of threats to our rights: foreign nations, fellow citizens, and the government itself. First, government has a duty to protect its citizens from any outside threats by providing for the common defense and conducting a foreign policy that dissuades foreign countries from threatening our liberty. Second, to prevent citizens from harming each other, the government passes laws punishing those who would violate rights, by protecting and enforcing contracts and voluntary exchanges, and by establishing a basic legal system where rules apply equally to all. Finally, government has an obligation to refrain from violating citizens’ natural rights.
In the case of Plessy v. Ferguson the government itself was a threat to Homer Plessy. Government cannot infringe citizens’ rights to life and liberty by harming or oppressing them, and it must refrain from excessive taxation of citizens in order to protect their right to property. The issue in Plessy is the oppression held by the conductor and the majority. In the majority decision the Justices recognize that there is an issue by placing the power to assign race to a train conductor, however, they do nothing to remedy the situation or any of the issues Plessy brought forth. The majority claims that “in the nature of things it [the fourteenth amendment] could not have been intended to abolish distinctions based upon color, or to enforce social, as distinguished from political equality, or a commingling of the two races unsatisfactory to either.” In short, segregation does not in itself constitute unlawful discrimination. However, this opinion was not held by all the justices.
The dissenting opinion reads “legalized race segregation …reversed the minimal gains attained by Blacks during Reconstruction.” The opinion goes on to state that due to the judgment held by the majority, Plessy may be suspected of not being white and consequently not entitled to any of the public and private benefits associated with white status. The court concluded that if Plessy were white he may have a right to damages against the train company, asserting that whiteness is superior to any and all of the colored races.
Going back to the Declaration of Independence, legitimate government must not only secure rights but also arise out of the consent of the governed. The consent of the governed is the standard by which a government’s legitimacy is judged. As the Declaration of Independence asserts: “Governments are instituted among Men…deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” Since all men are created equal, no individual or group has an inherent right to rule over anyone else. The only way anyone can have the authority to govern his equals is if they consent to his rule. Therefore, if enough people had an issue with the manner in which the government operated and believed that the government was oppressing their rights, like what happened in the Plessy case, then the public can revoke their consent. A government not based on consent would unjustly deprive its citizens of the fundamental right to liberty. There are two principal ways that the government obtains the consent of its citizens. First, citizens consent to the institution of a particular type of government. The American people, for example, ratified their Constitution through state conventions. Citizens also express their ongoing consent through frequent and fair elections.
Obviously, the country has never withdraw consent for the government, but it is not hard to see why it might. There are so many issues in this country between race and class that withdrawn consent could seem possible. The Plessy case brought separate but equal into question and while it made no difference at the time, in the future its decision would be overturned. People would begin to understand that there are no innate, biological differences between the white and black races. However, there will always be people who believe otherwise like Fitzhugh. Despite the obviously misleading and racist tendencies of Fitzhugh’s arguments, more recent scholarship has reexamined his works and their critique of modern capitalism’s industrialized, mechanized society in relation to Marxism and its theoretical offshoots. Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois had disagreements in certain areas, but both agreed that there should equality among the races. It seems as though race and class in America will always be a topic.