"Cast down your buckets where you are." When I read Booker T. Washington's speech, I was all for it; I thought, what a great and practical idea. Start somewhere, do what you know, and work your way up. I thought his speech, addressing both the freed African American community as well as white community, was inspiring and helpful. It was a "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" kind of speech. He asked of both races to work together and pull the load upward. In remaining faithful to one another, he suggested, both races would feel empowered. It sounded like a great idea, until W.E.B. DuBois asked this question: "How does it feel to be a problem?"
The more I thought about this question, the more I realized Washington's idea wouldn't work in reality. If African Americans remained on plantations, working for the white owners that enslaved them for so long, were they truly free? Even if they were being compensated, what was the difference between their life pre- and post-slavery? It had been engrained in the white American's brains for so long that African Americans were the inferior race; that they were a problem and their only worth was working in the fields. Did we really think those attitudes would change overnight? That "casting down your buckers where you are" on white land, continuing to work under white control, would help bring about any sort of change? Chances are, the white owners would continue to mistreat the African Americans, to continue to treat them as slaves, because who would hold them accountable and tell them otherwise?
By casting down their buckets, African Americans would be compromising. They would continue to be treated unequally. They would remain in their situation indefinitely; their children would inherit that fate, and their children's children the same fate. By continuing to be the ones bossed around, uneducated and without a voice, they would continue to see themselves as the white people saw them--inferior, a problem. DuBois suggestion turned out to be more powerful, inspiring, and helpful than Washington's. Although his message would require more work and would by no means be easy, what he wanted was true equality, and he knew it wouldn't happen if African Americans continued to accept the lives they had been forced to live before freedom.
I very much agree with your thoughts on Washington's speech. I believe he had good intentions, but in reality his advice would just hurt African Americans. Like you said, Washington's vision basically has African Americans acting as glorified slaves. They would continue to be treated unequally, even if they were technically free. I liked how you recognized that choosing a way different than Washington's would require more work and not be easy, but it would lead to true equality in a way Washington's ideas would not.
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