The Black Descendants: The Case for Our Freedom of Thought.

by: Brittany Talissa King

We’re twenty weeks into the COVID-19 pandemic and 75 days post-George Floyd. The street-marches for justice have not ceased, but the actions to eradicate racial inequality have popularized through conversations assembled on virtual platforms and social media, making this current discourse a novel marker in American history. And since black Americans finally have the world’s attention, more voices continue to weighed-in, like actor Terry Crews and rapper Kanye West, to filmmaker Ava DuVernay and minority leader Stacy Abrams — who appeared on Oprah’s zoom special, “Where Do We Go From Here?” The under-belly of these debates aim toward black liberation, but the POVs with how to attain it have not aligned.

But, 2020 is not the first time this has occurred.

The genesis of this conversation was debated amongst educator Booker T. Washington and sociologist W.E.B. Dubois, three decades succeeding the Emancipation Proclamation. Both men publicized their ideas on how to strive for racial deliverance, but their visions sought opposite directions.

Most famously in his Atlanta compromise address, Washington advocated that the black community should accept the inevitable racial barriers they’d face since American Slavery was their close yesterday. And not to refuge inside the past, or wait for America’s repentance — but that progress and privileges comes as “a result of severe and constant [hard-work] rather than of artificial forcing,” — -which is to say, demanding an obligatory apology inadvertently keeps blacks as whites’ subordinates rather than their peers.

But, Dubois opposed Washington’s position, being a proponent for combating racial oppression through activism. He held the government responsible for legislating civil rights and economical repair for the black community — beliefs that pushed him to co-organize the notable organization for “colored people,” the NAACP. Additionally, these beliefs shaped his celebrated book, The Souls of Black Folks — where Dubois dedicated a chapter critiquing Washington’s Atlanta speech stating, “Mr…