tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8776899.post113520524658501649..comments2024-03-06T03:15:58.539-05:00Comments on <b>THE NEW REFORM CLUB</b>: Tom Van Dyke on Washington, Du Bois, and African-American ProspectsHunter Bakerhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14961831404331998743noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8776899.post-1165455995805607692006-12-06T20:46:00.000-05:002006-12-06T20:46:00.000-05:00For those finding this on Google, my original essa...For those finding this on Google, my original essay, "Vision>Caution>Impatience>Demagoguery, " can be found <A HREF="http://reformclub.blogspot.com/2005/12/visioncautionimpatiencedemagoguery.html" REL="nofollow">here.</A>Tom Van Dykehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07121072404143877596noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8776899.post-1135293889673601032005-12-22T18:24:00.000-05:002005-12-22T18:24:00.000-05:00And thank you, S.T.In his famous 1895 speech we di...And thank you, S.T.<BR/><BR/>In his famous 1895 speech we discuss, Booker T. Washington cited what seems to have been a well-known line from <A HREF="http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=p&ID=21225&c=333" REL="nofollow">John Greenleaf Whittier's breathtaking Civil War poems</A> ("Song of the Negro Boatmen"):<BR/><BR/><BR/>So sing our dusky gondoliers;<BR/>And with a secret pain,<BR/>And smiles that seem akin to tears,<BR/>We hear the wild refrain.<BR/><BR/>We dare not share the negro's trust,<BR/>Nor yet his hope deny;<BR/>We only know that God is just,<BR/>And every wrong shall die.<BR/><BR/>Rude seems the song; each swarthy face,<BR/>Flame-lighted, ruder still<BR/>We start to think that hapless race<BR/>Must shape our good or ill;<BR/><BR/><STRONG>That laws of changeless justice bind<BR/>Oppressor with oppressed;</STRONG><BR/>And, close as sin and suffering joined,<BR/>We march to Fate abreast.<BR/><BR/>Sing on, poor hearts! your chant shall be<BR/>Our sign of blight or bloom,<BR/>The Vala-song of Liberty,<BR/>Or death-rune of our doom<BR/><BR/><I>1862.</I><BR/><BR/><BR/>We're all in this together; our fates are intertwined. But I think most of us on the right are turned off by Black History as taught these days because it's been co-opted and revised by the Black left (which is for practical purposes, a redundancy).<BR/><BR/>I think we all might agree that it's hopelessness that's the true enemy. It's perhaps up to the right to preserve and restore Booker T. Washington; his genius is self-evident and is now re-proved in this 21st century, but we must also learn why he failed.<BR/><BR/><I>"Reason is always a kind of brute force; those who appeal to the head rather than the heart, however pallid and polite, are necessarily men of violence. We speak of 'touching' a man's heart, but we can do nothing to his head but hit it."</I>---Chesterton<BR/><BR/>If the Right is to contribute to The Struggle, to take up the baton now, we must learn to feel it ourselves. Bromides from <I>Poor Richard's Almanack</I> aren't going to swing it, as Bill Cosby recently found out.<BR/><BR/>And if we're to comprehend the tragedy of the aggrieved yet self-afflicted Third World, then perhaps we should, in Booker T. Washington's words, cast down our buckets where we are.<BR/><BR/>The Black Experience is a Rosetta Stone for us to learn of and understand such things.Tom Van Dykehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07121072404143877596noreply@blogger.com