From: The Frederick Douglass Papers Project (Digital addition) https://frederickdouglasspapersproject.com/s/digitaledition/item/19138?utm_source=chatgpt.com
THE NATION’S PROBLEM: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN
WASHINGTON, DC., ON 16 APRIL 1889
Washington, 27 April 1889. Other texts in 1:33
46 (June 1889); Washington, 17 April 1889; , 6 : 221-39
(October 1889) (Washington, D.C., 1889),
3-27; Holland, , 374-79.
“One of the few errors to which we are clinging most persistently and, as I think, mischievously, has come into great prominence of late. It is the cultivation and stimulation amongst us of a sentiment which we are pleased to call race pride,” Frederick Douglass.
Herman Williams 3rd here. I’m 72 years old – born in 1953. I lived through the Civil Rights era with my eyes wide open. I was there the moment Colored people, Negroes, Ghetto Dwellers (Dr. King’s term), Yellow Negroes, Mulattoes, and Bourgeois, became a “Black People”. In my opinion, it was thee, most shocking, worst idea in the history of humanity–this entire blog is dedicated to making the case, and offering alternatives.
Which is why I was shocked to find this speech by Sir Frederick Douglass (Knighthood deserved if not officially given) in Washington, D.C., 1889. I’m not going to say anything else, except that once you've finished reading this excerpt of the speech, perhaps you'll check out the titles in this blog and share them with others. Enjoy!
The words of Frederick Douglass
“I profoundly wish I could make a cheerful response to this inquiry. But the omens are against me. I am compelled to say that while we have no longer to contend with the physical wrongs and abominations of slavery: while we have no longer to chill the blood of our hearers by talking of whips, chains, branding irons and bloodhounds; we have, as already intimated, to contend with a foe, which though less palpable, is still a fierce and formidable foe. It is the ghost of a bygone, dead, and buried institution. It loads the very air with a malignant prejudice of race. It has poisoned the fountains of justice and defiled the altars of religion. It acts upon the body politic as the leprous distillment acted upon the blood and body of the murdered king of Denmark.
In antebellum times, it was the standing defense of slavery. In our own times, it is employed in defense of oppression and proscription. Until this foe is conquered and driven from the breasts of the American people, our relations will be unhappy, our progress slow, our lives embittered, our freedom a mockery, and our citizenship a delusion.
The work before us is to meet and combat this prejudice by lives and acquirements which contradict and put to shame this narrow and malignant feeling. We have errors of our own to abandon, habits to reform, and manners to improve, ignorance to dispel, and character to build up. This is something which no power on earth can do for us, and which no power on earth can prevent our doing for ourselves.
ln pointing out errors and mistakes common among ourselves, I shall run the risk of incurring displeasure, for no people with whom I am acquainted are less tolerant of criticism than ourselves, especially from one of our own numbers. We have been so long in the habit of tracing our failures and misfortunes to the views and acts of others that we seem, in some measure, to have lost the talent and disposition of seeing our own faults, or of “seeing ourselves as others see us.” And yet no man can do a better service to another man than to correct his mistakes, point out his hurtful errors. show him the path of truth, duty, and safety.
One of the few errors to which we are clinging most persistently and, as I think, mischievously, has come into great prominence of late. It is the cultivation and stimulation amongst us of a sentiment which we are pleased to call race pride. I find it in all our books, papers, and speeches. For my part, I see no superiority or inferiority in race or color. Neither the one nor the other is a proper source of pride or complacency. Our race and color are not of our own choosing. We have no volition in the case, one way or another.
The only excuse for pride in individuals or races is the fact of their own achievements. Our color is the gift of the Almighty. We should neither be proud of it nor ashamed of it. But we may well enough be proud or ashamed when we have ourselves achieved success or have failed of success. If the sun has curled our hair and tanned our skin, let the sun be proud of its achievement, for we have done nothing for it one way or the other. I see no benefit to be derived from this everlasting exhortation by speakers and writers among us to the cultivation of race pride.
On the contrary, I see in it a positive evil. It is building on a false foundation. Besides, what is the thing we are fighting against, and what are we fighting for in this country? What is the mountain devil, the lion in the way of our progress? What is it but American race pride; an assumption of superiority upon the ground of race and color? Do we not know that every argument we make, and every pretension we set up in favor of race pride, is giving the enemy a stick to break our own heads?
But it may be said that we shall put down race pride in the white people by cultivating race pride among ourselves. The answer to this is that devils are not cast out by Bellzebub, the prince of devils.The poorest and meanest white man when he has nothing else to commend him says: “I am a white man, I am.” We can all see the low extremity reached by that sort of race pride, and yet we encourage it when we pride ourselves upon the fact of our color. Let us do away with this supercilious nonsense. If we are proud let it be because we have had some agency in producing that of which to be proud. Do not let us be proud of what we can neither help nor hinder.
The Bible puts us in the condition in this respect of the leopard, and says that we can no more change our skin than the leopard his spots. If we are unfortunate in being placed among a people with whom our color is a badge of inferiority, there is no need of our making ourselves ridiculous by forever, in words, affecting to be proud of a circumstance due to no virtue in us, and over which we have no control. You will, perhaps, think this criticism uncalled for. My answer is that truth is never uncalled for. Right thinking is essential to right acting, and I hope that we shall, hereafter, see the wisdom of basing our pride and complacency upon substantial RESULTS ACCOMPLISHED BY THE RACE.
The question here raised is not merely theoretical, but is of practical significance. In some of our colored public journals, with a view to crippling my influence with the colored race, I have seen myself charged with a lack of race pride. I am not ashamed of that charge. I have no apology or vindication to offer. If fifty years of uncompromising devotion to the cause of the colored man in this country does not vindicate me, I am content to live without vindication.
While I have no more reason to be proud of our race than another, I dare say, and I fear no contradiction, that there is no other man in the United States prouder than myself of any great achievement, mental or mechanical, of which any colored man or woman is the author. This is not because I am a colored man, but because I am a man, and because color is treated as a crime by the American people. My sentiments at this point originate not in my color, but in a sense of justice common to all right-minded men. It is that which gives the sympathy of the crowd to the underdog, no matter what may be his color. When a colored man is charged with a want of race pride, he may well ask, What race? For a large percentage of the colored race, are related in some degree to more than one race.
But the whole assumption of race pride is ridiculous. Let us, have done with complexional superiorities or inferiorities, complexional pride or shame. I want no better basis for my activities and affinities than the broad foundation laid by the Bible itself, that God has made of one blood all nations of men to dwell on all the face of the earth. This comprehends the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man.
*I only added commas or hyphens*
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