Of the 828 diaries that I have published here at Daily Kos, my February 27, 2015 diary about Frederick Douglass, “What the Black Man Wanted,” remains one of my personal favorites.
Specific lines in Douglass’ 1865 speech, What the Black Man Wants, touched upon some themes that arose out of the 2016 election of of The Occupant. Then, on the first day of February, in 2017 (which is designated as Black History Month), The Damn Fool name-dropped Frederick Douglass, saying that Mr. Douglass “is an example of somebody who's done an amazing job that is being recognized more and more.” I was so outraged that The Damn Fool dared to utter the name of a black man that stood against everything that The Damn Fool stands for, I revised and republished my 2015 essay as “Frederick Douglass and the Rank Undergrowth of Treason.”
In honor of this great, great man and on the date that he chose to celebrate his birthday, I am republishing “Frederick Douglass and the ‘Rank Undergrowth of Treason’.”
The utter gravitas of Mr Douglass’ s words, the moral clarity of his actions and his example of a life well-examined and lived should continue to be alive and vibrant for all Americans, especially at this moment in the history of our democratic republic.
As usual, light edits, slight revisions, and updated links to this essay have been applied.
Chitown Kev 2.14.19 12:55 AM CST
Last Sunday evening, I was treated to a black conservative creature feature.
First, there was Stanford professor Dr. Shelby Steele's appearance with The Atlantic magazine national correspondent Ta-Nehisi Coates on This Week, reported here at Daily Kos by Egberto Willis.
The most shocking statement from Shelby Steele occurred when George Stephanopoulos asked if government action is not the answer to solve the structural wealth disparity between blacks and whites than what is. "You don't close it," said Shelby Steele. "You don't do anything. You leave it alone. You practice as best as possible a discipline of freedom where your struggle is not for some sort of advantage. But your struggle is for freedom itself. That's what you do."
Pretty much at the same time, I was reading Juan Williams' pig-sh*t shoveling paean to Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas published in the Wall Street Journal, which I diaried about in the Tuesday's Chile edition of Black Kos. I noted a quote by Black abolitionist/woman's suffragist Frederick Douglass:
In his dissent in Grutter v. Bollinger, a case that preserved the affirmative-action policies of the University of Michigan Law School, he quoted an 1865 speech by Frederick Douglass : “‘What I ask for the Negro is not benevolence, not pity, not sympathy, but simply justice.’ . . . Like Douglass, I believe blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators.”
Well...I doubt that Mr. Douglass was referring, specifically, to "the meddling of university administrators" in an 1865 speech; Mr. Douglass had more pressing matters that needed his attention. Nevertheless, I looked up the Douglass speech, What The Black Man Wants, and found a sentiment articulated by Dr. Steele on This Week and explicitly quoted in Clarence Thomas's Grutter v. Bollinger dissent:
Everybody has asked the question, and they learned to ask it early of the abolitionists, “What shall we do with the Negro?” I have had but one answer from the beginning. Do nothing with us! Your doing with us has already played the mischief with us. Do nothing with us! If the apples will not remain on the tree of their own strength, if they are wormeaten at the core, if they are early ripe and disposed to fall, let them fall! I am not for tying or fastening them on the tree in any way, except by nature’s plan, and if they will not stay there, let them fall.
The specific historical context of Frederick Douglass’ 1865 (impromptu!) speech before the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, What The Black Man Wants is, in part, the subject of this diary. The other subject of this diary is the use and abuse of the legacy of Frederick Douglass by modern conservatives.