I'm reading a book about the rise of Teddy Roosevelt. Not because I'm interested in him specifically. I just enjoy reading these types of books from time to time.
I forget the exact year this incident happened, but it would have been late 1800's.
Roosevelt is in Chicago and iirc he was involved in discussions for who would be the next Republican nomination for Governor.
Fairly late in the discussions, Roosevelt suggests nominating a black man. Why? Because he's black, obviously.
It got me thinking, who was the first DEI hire in the United States? I'm sure this wasn't the first. (although the black guy didn't get the nomination in this case)
Collectivist racial thought goes way back. At least back to the arguments between WEB DuBois and Booker T. Washington (who served both T. Roosevelt and Taft as a race advisor.) The academic DuBois' "The Souls of Black Folk" vs. Washington and Tuskegee Institute. Academic vs. Vocational education as a focus for Black America is a classic argument in the Black community about how to respond to Jim Crow and segregation settling over the South.
Arguably, Radical Reconstruction Era South had 'black for black's sake' as well; going further back, there was a Southern tradition of smart, effective, & social blacks getting a pass in polite society in spite of being black as 'honorary whites.' (Though this is more qualitative & individual than a collectivist/DEI sort of thing.) You can see this in early indenture suits, where a black man formalized the indenture of another black man, making him formally property.
The culture of Freedmen, Mulattos, and Quadroons in pre-civil war South(specifically, New Orleans, as that was the only real metropolitan area in the South pre-Civil War) is arguably insane, and something that's rarely touched upon.
Probably because they really don't want to answer the question of 'Wait, you had a stratum of French college educated Blacks that ran businesses and newspapers? What happened to them?'
There were more metropolitan areas than New Orleans. Pensacola and Savannah, maybe Charleston. But they were all similar in that there was a class of educated blacks that typically owned slaves. Also, don't look too closely at the demographics of major slaveowners, because uncomfortable truths...
What happened to them?
Recently, I watched the History channel documentary (maybe docu-drama is a better description) about T. Roosevelt. They said he invited Booker T. Washington to dinner once, which was scandalous, but he never went further than that.
Last summer, I read "Up from Slavery" by Washington, and I thought in it, he only said he met with McKinley, not Roosevelt. Which maybe I misremembered. Did Washington and Roosevelt do more together?
I know he had dinner with Roosevelt and McKinley visited his school. Up From Slavery is a good book I thought. His last one was called My Larger Education which was really good
A lot of black liberals don’t like Booker T Washington. I do like that he encouraged learning a trade/skill. He has a quote about “black leaders” like Sharpton equating them to doctors who don’t want a cure for a disease
This was a legacy of reconstruction in the 1860s where they installed the dumbest, blackest, official / mayor / council and no Whites* were allowed to run.
*Former Confederates, which was practically every surviving White male in the south.
US politicians have been trying to artificially uplift black people ever since the emancipation proclamation. the internalized guilt over slavery has always been strong.
Really it's been Euros trying to uplift them more or less since they made contact. There's always been a fascination with the "other" and while there was often a degree of social opprobrium directed at them for their flaws, the Euros always were kinder and more humane than (say) the Muslims/Arabs/Turks.
Few African slaves ever wanted to return to Africa.
Imagine if the U.S. made some agreement with some West African countries where reparations were given with the requirement that you leave the U.S and go to one of those African countries where you get 20 acres of land or something. I’d bet very few would take them up on that offer
Isn't that basically Liberia
FJB
Going further back wasn't there a whole paternalistic discussion about this after the civil war? I seem to remember that it was taken a priori that they'd been here too long to go back to Africa so "something" had to be done.