Your analysis of our circumstances brings cheer and provokes interest.

"Arguments over how to solve these problems inevitably raise questions about causes and solutions that evoke the competing (and often intertwined) perspectives that we attach to Washington and DuBois."

So much to read.

"In this questioning, Washington and DuBois continue to cast long shadows, even as the landscape itself changes in profound ways."

One of the problems burgeoning in the US is the process of incarceration as a profit making enterprise. While the consequences of the criminal justice system can be observed to have impact on people of color out of proportion to their statistical prevalence in the total population, those consequences also function against a population comprised of those within certain economic strata, regardless of 'race'. In effect, people are criminalized for being poor or mentally ill, as well as for looking different. All are forms of being not of the dominant culture - which might also be considered a state of being excluded from that culture.

After eight years of a national foreign policy that might be described as pre-Apocalyptic, people now are dying at increased rates because of the lack of funding for safety net programs.

Why is that?

Full disclosure: Joe Lowndes and I shared some thoughts offline which I initiated.

It is important to note that President Obama's comments regarding personal responsibility, behavior and "attitude adjustment" have not been limited to just the black poor, as Joe suggests, but to all African Americans and, plainly, all Americans, period. Second, Booker T. Washington did not hold the exclusive rights to the "respect yourself" discussion. In fact, W.E.B. Du Bois was as outspoken on the matter as, if not more so than Washington.

For the accomplishment of these ends we need race organizations: Negro colleges, Negro newspapers, Negro business organizations, a Negro school of literature and art, and an intellectual clearing house, for all these products of the Negro mind, which we may call a Negro Academy.

...

No people that laughs at itself, and ridicules itself, and wishes to God it was anything but itself ever wrote its name in history; it must be inspired with the Divine faith of our black mothers, that out of the blood and dust of battle will march a victorious host, a mighty nation, a peculiar people, to speak to the nations of earth a Divine truth that shall make them free. And such a people must be united; not merely united for the organized theft of political spoils, not united to disgrace religion with whoremongers and ward-heelers; not united merely to protest and pass resolutions, but united to stop the ravages of consumption* among the Negro people, united to keep black boys from loafing, gambling and crime; united to guard the purity of black women and to reduce that vast army of black prostitutes that is today marching to hell; and united in serious organizations, to determine by careful conference and thoughtful interchange of opinion the broad lines of policy and action for the American Negro.

--W.E.B. Du Bois
From the Occasional Papers, No. 2, 1897, American Negro Academy

[*Consumption refers to tuberculosis.]

And by comparison, from Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union" speech:

But I have asserted a firm conviction - a conviction rooted in my faith in God and my faith in the American people - that working together we can move beyond some of our old racial wounds, and that in fact we have no choice is we are to continue on the path of a more perfect union.

For the African-American community, that path means embracing the burdens of our past without becoming victims of our past. It means continuing to insist on a full measure of justice in every aspect of American life. But it also means binding our particular grievances - for better health care, and better schools, and better jobs - to the larger aspirations of all Americans -- the white woman struggling to break the glass ceiling, the white man whose been laid off, the immigrant trying to feed his family. And it means taking full responsibility for own lives - by demanding more from our fathers, and spending more time with our children, and reading to them, and teaching them that while they may face challenges and discrimination in their own lives, they must never succumb to despair or cynicism; they must always believe that they can write their own destiny.

Do not make the mistake of confusing Obama's call that our "black" problems" be bound to those of our white brothers and sisters as some capitulation or accommodation. Recognize first and foremost that as a man -- a black man -- running for President, his goal to govern all the people, not just black people. And especially note, that Obama did not address "just poor blacks" as had been suggested, but the African American community and subsequently the "American community" as a whole.

And recall also a continuing note in all of his speeches, that we are all our brothers' and sisters' keepers. That we are all in the same boat together, and that we rise and fall together. That our responsibilities are shared.

Ultimately, Norrell's version of history regarding Booker T. Washington will be judged with direct comparison to the "definitive" histories already written about Washington and Du Bois. If his more version of events leads a reader to read on, to compare and to contrast the Norrell history with that of Harlan, or Lewis (in the case of Du Bois), it has earned its place on the bookshelves.

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