Booker T. Washington Response

Booker T. Washington’s, The awakening of the Negro, expository essay had an aimed audience of white middle-aged men with an objective of explaining the rationale behind his Tuskegee Institute and why it was built for educating colored men and women. Tuskegee’s common goal, as stated by Washington himself, is to reach the seven million colored people living in the Black Belt of the South and show them how to lift themselves up and live better lives. (Paragraph 4, line 7-10) However, the flaw in Washington’s argument is that his institute is built on teaching the already socially enslaved colored person to work with his or her hands in order to gain respect from the white man, but not with their mind. This rationality behind the Institute’s morality is very similar to keeping the colored people of the South as “working” slaves that now earn pennies more for the work they were once forced to do for free.
Washington addresses his institute as a place that is constantly in the working progress of preparing the leaders that will uplift the African-American race. Throughout the entire fifth paragraph, Washington breaks down the rationality behind his labor enforced school and demonstrates how having students be required to do manual labor helps mold themselves into leaders of the future. Most of all, we find the industrial system valuable in teaching economy, thrift, and the dignity of labor, in giving moral backbone to students. (Line 7-8) Washington then goes into the fact of stating that a student who possesses the knowledge of knowing how to build a harness a wagon gives certain confidence and moral independence. (Line9-10) This coming from a black man who has had the privilege of acquiring a decent education comes off as biased or one-sided; the mindset being similar to a white man who’s only job in life s to see the Black people of America struggle to do more than work with their hands. Washington makes himself come off as somewhat of a “sell-out” towards the African-American community with his ideals and views. His institute was established to educate the colored population with something they already were familiar with- labor and hard work. Nowhere in the fifth paragraph does Washington suggest the Black people of America use the intelligence of white America to gain success and respect amongst their white peers; he suggests learning to build with their hands in order to gain financial stability from meting the white man’s demands- a handout.
Later, he goes into the notion that the education and skills that the colored population can acquire from the Tuskegee Institute can better help themselves while hinting that this newfound advantage will pass over to the white population. Washington states that the Tuskegee Institute helps aid their students into learning how to better cultivate their lands and produce and gather their subsidence more efficiently. The object is not only to cultivate the land in a way to make it pay our boarding department, but at the same time to teach the students, in addition to the practical works, something of the chemistry of the soil, the best methods of drainage, dairying, the cultivation of fruit, the care of livestock and tools, and scores of other lessons needed by a people whose main dependence is on agriculture. (Line 2-6) Washington states that his school helps students pioneer in ways to cultivate and produce a better agriculture and helps teach them the tools to facilitate their labor in the fields. Teaching students how to grow better gardens and care for animals is a lesson needed for ones who live on the farm, but Washington fails to teach the students anything other than the “know-how” of better farming and not go into the “Why and how?” of better farming. He states that these tools in helping student’s better produce crops and healthier animals will aid those who depend on agriculture. Since that is majority of America- white America included- one must wonder on why a Black man is making his students do the work out in the fields for only a white person to eat. The education given helps aid the white population more than the black population because the whites won’t set foot near a farm to get their hands dirty, but blacks will for the scrap change they can get from producing healthy farms and livestock just to get by on the daily bases. He puts this as a main interest to the white population in order to attract and gain the support of the white population in agreeing that his methods of teaching the basics of manual labor and how to cultivate properly because, in the long-run, they will be the ones who benefit the most. Washington never goes into detail on how he teaches his students the scientific or mathematical part of better cultivation and it even hints to the point where we question if Washington had his students think of the crops they were growing at all. The only thing he says to draw the interest of white America is that he keeps his student s out in the fields, growing and gathering the food they will soon eat with great care and better methods than before.
Washington also keeps his people down into traditional gender roles that they have been accustomed to since birth. While the young men do the kinds of work I have mentioned, the young women to a large extent make, mend, and launder the clothing of the young men, and thus are taught important industries. (Line 19-20) His school is teaching the colored population to attend to the needs of others and work their way into getting respect and money from the white population. Washington does not take the initiative to establish new rule and a new mental foundation to his people, but decides to enforce the policy to which he had been taught to live by. Black women making and mending men’s clothing is something they have been taught to do since birth; their knowledge being passed down generation to generation from the women in their families in order to teach them the way in being a respectable woman. The men working in the; labor industry is something they have been doing since their ancestors came to the lands of America. Black me have been working with their hands for free to feed the white general public, and now Washington is enforcing this same morality onto his people to work and make money by doing cheap labor to gain a few coins to live by. He does not educate his people the ways to learn the forbidden knowledge of textbooks that the white children have learned. He does not aid his people into familiarizing themselves with the common education that will help them become successful in life and do something more profound and prestigious that will gain them much more respect from the white population than being a good blacksmith or carpenter.
In spite of the evil, the Negro got the habit of work from slavery. (Paragraph 9, line 1) Washington feels his people are only going to become successful in life if they learn to be more efficient and skilled with their hands. His theory is that the Negro has working in their blood and the only way they will gain respect and independence from the white man is to keep that ideology of manual labor for the white population to get a few cents and live accordingly. Washington does not feel Blacks are mentally capable of becoming intelligent enough to gain prestigious jobs in positions only thought for the white man. His own people suffer from the closed-mindedness of his morality that we have to work and become better in labor to get any amount of respect from anyone. His school is built on forcing the rationality that labor will give them happiness and prosperity, but intellect and education of the white children is what he fails to connect his rule with.