Du Bois and Booker T.

             Education is a fundamental right of all people, regardless of race, sex, religion, or anything else. W.E.B. Du Bois believed that during his time however, this was not the case. In his book The Souls of Black Folk, Du Bois analyses the importance of education, he also shows how this lack of education has affected the African American community. He also critiques Booker T. Washington’s ideas.

            Coming from an excellent educational background himself, Du Bois explains that without such education, people will become lost. He shows this in his explanation for why crime increased after the emancipation; if the former slaves had no idea of how the world worked, then how are they going to be able to take care of themselves? They will not be able to, they needed to be shown how the free world at the time operated. Further, he says that someone – namely the government – should have taken on that responsibility.

                       

            Du Bois also takes the time to analyze Booker T. Washington’s ideas. Du Bois explains that while Washington’s ideas did have their benefits, he believed that African Americans should not settle for it. Du Bois believed that African Americans needed to band together and get good educations so they could vote for African supporters into the Senate, that way new laws promoting the equality of blacks could get passed. Washington’s idea called for African’s to go to Tech/vocational schooling; he believed that Africans could show their importance in society by doing this, and ultimately gain equality as time went on.

            Du Bois believed that because Democracy was founded on the right to voice one’s opinions on unjust laws, that African Americans should assert themselves now, not wait for equality to come to them. They needed to act if they wanted to gain equality.

            I tend to agree with Du Bois, in that if someone wants to be recognized as an equal, they need to assert themselves. This has always been the case, during the Union Labor movements the workers needed to band together to show that they did not intend to stand for being treated with the injustice that the businesses were showing them, and it was not until they did so that they were treated better. It is nice to think that they would have been treated better by showing their worth through their work, but as history shows us, this was not the case.

 There are many other examples of this shown throughout the course of history as well, how did the Jews gain their freedom from Egypt? It wasn’t by pleasing their Egyptian overseers. How did Women gain equality in America during the early 20^th century? It wasn’t by sitting around and performing housework. As sad as it may sound, if people have wanted to gain equality in this world, they have needed to fight for it. I’m not saying that this is a good thing, it’s just the way that the world has worked over the passed few thousand years; sitting around and accepting your current condition is not going to get you a better place in society.