Washington Vs. Du Bois

Washington at the beginning of his speech seems to really want the Negro race to move forward and to leave behind the prejudices of the Southern white people. Washington is seemingly encouraging them to join together, work together with each other in order to better both races. However, as the speech goes on we see Washington contradict himself (he seems to change his stance) and basically tell the Negroes that they should try and get whatever they can. That they need to work on obtaining equality with the Southern white people and that they need to bring themselves up to the 'level' of the whites. So I found Washington's speech to be quite contradictory.

Du Bois' piece was basically his way of disagreeing with what Washington was saying and pointing out the bad aspects of his speech. Du Bois repeats parts of Washington's speech and comments on them. He explains that although Washington sounded as though he was all for the equality between races it seemed that he didn't think that the equality should be an immediate change and that Negroes should be happy for what they get. Basically Du Bois thought Washington was telling the Negro community to give up some parts of equality in order to obtain other aspects.

After reading the pieces by Washington and Du Bois I have no choice but to agree with Du Bois. Du Bois addresses how he disagrees with Washington's advice to the Negro race and how he thinks Washington was wrong. Du Bois criticizes Washington's speech only after he admired the small parts which he thought were well done. Du Bois brings up very valid points about the downfalls of Washington's speech. As Du Bois stated:

"Mr. Washington distinctly
asks that black people give up,
at least, for the present, three
things --
1. political power
2. insistence on civil rights
3. higher education of Negro youth" (889)

and Washington instructs them to instead focus all of their energy on "industrial education, the accumulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South" (889). Du Bois, and I agree, seemed to feel as though that is a lot to give up and there is a lack of anything really gained.