The Black Conservative Tradition

Damon Root, over at libertarian website Reason's website, writes about a recent analysis of this blog's namesake (hat tip: Adlyn Morrison): "In the latest New Republic, historian Steven Hahn has a long and very interesting review of the recent Booker T. Washington biography Up from History. As Hahn discusses, Washington famously championed economic advancement and education over political activism as the key to black equality, an approach Washington perhaps best articulated in his 'Atlanta Compromise' speech of 1895. After reading Hahn’s review, liberal blogger Matthew Yglesias was apparently struck by the need for 'the concept of a ‘black conservative’ political tradition' in order to best understand Washington’s life and accomplishments. Thankfully, a little Googling revealed that a black conservative tradition does exist, though Yglesias might have searched a little further before typing this:

It’s only extremely recently that the idea of an African-American aligning himself, à la Clarence Thomas, with the mainstream conservative movement in America could be remotely possible. But even so, that didn’t mean there was no ideological conflict in black politics or that general rightist sentiments somehow didn’t exist.

Actually, the great Harlem Renaissance author and journalist George Schuyler — who was known as the 'black H.L. Mencken' — published 'general rightist sentiments' long before Clarence Thomas came on the scene, including Schuyler’s unambiguously titled 1966 autobiography Black and Conservative. And the celebrated novelist and folklorist Zora Neale Hurston both endorsed conservative Sen. Robert A Taft in the 1952 presidential election and repeatedly attacked FDR’s [former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's] New Deal, including this 1951 assault from the pages of the Saturday Evening Post:

Throughout the New Deal era the relief program was the biggest weapon ever placed in the hands of those who sought power and votes. If the average American had been asked flatly to abandon his rights as a citizen and to submit to a personal rule, he would have chewed tobacco and spit white lime. But under relief, dependent upon the Government for their daily bread, men gradually relaxed their watchfulness and submitted to the will of the "Little White Father," more or less. Once they had weakened that far, it was easy to go on an on voting for more relief, and leaving Government affairs in the hands of a few. The change from a republic to a dictatorship was imperceptibly pushed ahead.

So I think it’s safe to say that Clarence Thomas has a few more prominent forebears than just Booker T. Washington. And while I wouldn’t call him a conservative, Frederick Douglass absolutely counts as one of America’s greatest classical liberals."

Booker Rising response: Don't forget Nannie Helen Burroughs, the educator and orator known for her "12 Things the Negro Must Do For Himself". She was known as the "female Booker T. Washington" in her prime. Some folks include Marcus Garvey and T.R.M. Howard in this tradition. I'm unsure whether I'd quite do so, but there is a Garveyite black nationalist wing of the black conservative tradition. Outside of the United States, there's John Langalibalele Dube, the South African educator, and co-founder and founding president of the African National Congress. He was a bookerista known as "the Booker T. Washington of South Africa". There are J.B. Danquah, one of Ghana's "Big Six" who pushed for independence. He later led the charge against President Kwame Nkrumah's socialist-authoritarian policies, and died in prison for his views). Mr. Danquah was arguing for democratic capitalism long before Jack Kemp emerged on the U.S. political scene. There's also former Ghanaian Prime Minister Kofi Busia. The Ghanaians even call their black conservative tradition the "Danquah-Busia tradition". All these folks came before the rise of Mr. Thomas...or Thomas Sowell for that matter.