How Much Agency?
Joseph Lowndes questions how severe the restraints were on Washington's actions.
"In Norrell's account, Washington faced hostility and opposition no matter what he did. . . . perhaps he had more agency than Norrell gives him credit for. In other words his denigration of political struggle and his public call to eschew the fight for social equality was, in fact, more of a choice than a constraint."
His point is that Washington was criticized for everything he did--so maybe he could have chosen different policies; thus his accommodationist stance was chosen, not inevitable.
Perhaps, but was another strategy even possible? Washington had one clear success--the creation of Tuskegee and its satellites. Could even that have been achieved if he had taken overt political action or challenged whites on the issue of social equality? Antagonists could have burned his school down with impunity. All they needed was justification.
One piece of evidence against Washington's having a great deal of agency is that Washington's Boston detractors did not end up accomplishing very much. After Washington died, they didn't become the leaders of African-Americans and they didn't change the South. The successes of the NAACP, which W. E. B. Du Bois helped start, came about many decades later. This is the way it seems to me, but I'm interested in challenges to this view.
It's true that Washington's detractors did not have as much accomplishment to show as Washington -- Tuskegee Inst. etc., however I think Mr. Lowndes raises a valid issue -- if the counter discourse never existed as a challenge to the metahistorical context, could the changes that they demanded ever enter into the American subconscious as need and a want. Sometimes articulation is the first step before the barricades are established, no?
March 11, 2009 11:54 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sorry, but this assumes that "antagonists" would have beeen "restrained" by the logic of "clear and present danger," so to speak, when in fact, they could have burned it down and lynched Washington just because it Tuesday. No "justification" was necessary.
The shortcoming of this discussion at TPM of Norrell's book is that there it does not include any black historians to fill in the rest of the puzzle.
March 11, 2009 3:52 PM | Reply | Permalink
Perhaps you are right that whites could have burned down Tuskegee at will, but I would need more evidence to be convinced. The awful things that happened in the South at that time were cloaked in justifications--the perpetrators had to scare the populace, building up fear and hatred. The fact that Tuskegee was not torched suggests that Washington had won respect from the whites in the area -- whether it was respect for his success in educating blacks or respect for his powerful allies (in the South and North), I don't know. It may have been both.
March 11, 2009 9:48 PM | Reply | Permalink