"We of the vanguard often look with despair at these very characteristics of the masses. We feel that these easy-going traits constitute our chief racial weaknesses and chief hindrance to faster progress. This impatience on our part is understandable, but I believe it involves an underestimation. It takes no account of the technique for survival that the masses have evolved through the experience of generations. It does not give credit for the fact that in their ignorance and defenselessness, with the weight of outnumbering millions on their shoulders, they have persisted, they straightened up their bent backs by degrees, and from the travail of their agony buried in their laughter brought us forth as tokens of their potentialities. They used the methods available; and these methods were not always aimlessness and dumb servility. For one thing, they learned the white man with whom they had to deal. They learned him through and through without ever completely revealing themselves. Their knowledge of that white man's weaknesses as well as his strength came to be almost intuitive. And when they felt it futile to depend upon their own strength, they took advantage of his weakness--the blind side of arrogance and the gullibility that goes along with overbearing pride. It is possible that these masses might have done much better--I am not unmindful of their numerous shortcomings--yet, it is certain that they might have done much worse.
"The most vital factor in the future of any race is the power to survive; and the masses have an instinctive knowledge of their possession of that power. Firm confidence is theirs through having survived every degree of hardship and oppression to which any race could be subjected."
P.120-121, ALONG THIS WAY : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1933)
Friday, October 31, 2014
LOVE FOR THE MASSES OF BLACK PEOPLE
"We of the vanguard often look with despair at these very characteristics of the masses. We feel that these easy-going traits constitute our chief racial weaknesses and chief hindrance to faster progress. This impatience on our part is understandable, but I believe it involves an underestimation. It takes no account of the technique for survival that the masses have evolved through the experience of generations. It does not give credit for the fact that in their ignorance and defenselessness, with the weight of outnumbering millions on their shoulders, they have persisted, they straightened up their bent backs by degrees, and from the travail of their agony buried in their laughter brought us forth as tokens of their potentialities. They used the methods available; and these methods were not always aimlessness and dumb servility. For one thing, they learned the white man with whom they had to deal. They learned him through and through without ever completely revealing themselves. Their knowledge of that white man's weaknesses as well as his strength came to be almost intuitive. And when they felt it futile to depend upon their own strength, they took advantage of his weakness--the blind side of arrogance and the gullibility that goes along with overbearing pride. It is possible that these masses might have done much better--I am not unmindful of their numerous shortcomings--yet, it is certain that they might have done much worse.
"The most vital factor in the future of any race is the power to survive; and the masses have an instinctive knowledge of their possession of that power. Firm confidence is theirs through having survived every degree of hardship and oppression to which any race could be subjected."
P.120-121, ALONG THIS WAY : THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF JAMES WELDON JOHNSON (1933)