Booker T's common sense

Wish I'd said that!

[Reprinted from Issues & Views November 19, 2001]

Booker T. Washington tried to tell us at the end of another century that the best solution to questions of equity, diversity and racism--though he was too clear a thinker to use those catchphrases--was self-reliance. A home and trade of one's own.

Give us a chance to buy and live in our own house, on our own land, and pay taxes on it. Teach us a marketable skill. Let us earn and invest our own money. Then we might all be surprised at how rapidly racial discrimination and grinding poverty would dissipate.

Then we would be citizens, not dependents. We would be shareholders, not victims. Our idea of politics would progress beyond what we can get out of government and how we can prevent government's getting too much out of us. We would stop eyeing each other either enviously or suspiciously. . . .

Booker T. Washington still lives because his wisdom is rediscovered every time a new generation sees through the nostrums that replaced his common sense. He told us to put our bucket down where we are, to make of our own home what we would fain seek elsewhere, to improve and prosper ourselves, and then we would find we'd improved and prospered society.

-- Paul Greenberg is Editorial Page Editor of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and a syndicated columnist (Tribune Media); excerpted from What's good for the Delta is good for the country.

See also on the Issues & Views site:

Booker T. Washington: True Believer

Booker T. Washington: Legacy Lost

Copyright © 2008 Issues & Views