Darkwater by W. E. B. Du Bois

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Again, to make experience a qualification for the franchise is absurd:
it would stop the spread of democracy and make political power
hereditary, a prerequisite of a class, caste, race, or sex. It has of
course been soberly argued that only white folk or Englishmen, or men,
are really capable of exercising sovereign power in a modern state. The
statement proves too much: only yesterday it was Englishmen of high
descent, or men of "blood," or sovereigns "by divine right" who could
rule. Today the civilized world is being ruled by the descendants of
persons who a century ago were pronounced incapable of ever developing a
self-ruling people. In every modern state there must come to the polls
every generation, and indeed every year, men who are inexperienced in
the solutions of the political problems that confront them and who must
experiment in methods of ruling men. Thus and thus only will
civilization grow.

Again, what is this theory of benevolent guardianship for women, for the
masses, for Negroes--for "lesser breeds without the law"? It is simply
the old cry of privilege, the old assumption that there are those in the
world who know better what is best for others than those others know
themselves, and who can be trusted to do this best.

In fact no one knows himself but that self's own soul. The vast and
wonderful knowledge of this marvelous universe is locked in the bosoms
of its individual souls. To tap this mighty reservoir of experience,
knowledge, beauty, love, and deed we must appeal not to the few, not to
some souls, but to all. The narrower the appeal, the poorer the culture;
the wider the appeal the more magnificent are the possibilities.
Infinite is human nature. We make it finite by choking back the mass of
men, by attempting to speak for others, to interpret and act for them,
and we end by acting for ourselves and using the world as our private
property. If this were all, it were crime enough--but it is not all: by
our ignorance we make the creation of the greater world impossible; we
beat back a world built of the playing of dogs and laughter of children,
the song of Black Folk and worship of Yellow, the love of women and
strength of men, and try to express by a group of doddering ancients the
Will of the World.

There are people who insist upon regarding the franchise, not as a
necessity for the many, but as a privilege for the few. They say of
persons and classes: "They do not need the ballot." This is often said
of women. It is argued that everything which women with the ballot might
do for themselves can be done for them; that they have influence and
friends "at court," and that their enfranchisement would simply double
the number of ballots. So, too, we are told that American Negroes can
have done for them by other voters all that they could possibly do for
themselves with the ballot and much more because the white voters are
more intelligent.

Further than this, it is argued that many of the disfranchised people
recognize these facts. "Women do not want the ballot" has been a very
effective counter war-cry, so much so that many men have taken refuge in
the declaration: "When they want to vote, why, then--" So, too, we are
continually told that the "best" Negroes stay out of politics.

Such arguments show so curious a misapprehension of the foundation of
the argument for democracy that the argument must be continually
restated and emphasized. We must remember that if the theory of
democracy is correct, the right to vote is not merely a privilege, not
simply a method of meeting the needs of a particular group, and least of
all a matter of recognized want or desire. Democracy is a method of
realizing the broadest measure of justice to all human beings. The world
has, in the past, attempted various methods of attaining this end, most
of which can be summed up in three categories:

The method of the benevolent tyrant.
The method of the select few.
The method of the excluded groups.

The method of intrusting the government of a people to a strong ruler
has great advantages when the ruler combines strength with ability,
unselfish devotion to the public good, and knowledge of what that good
calls for. Such a combination is, however, rare and the selection of the
right ruler is very difficult. To leave the selection to force is to put
a premium on physical strength, chance, and intrigue; to make the
selection a matter of birth simply transfers the real power from
sovereign to minister. Inevitably the choice of rulers must fall on
electors.

Then comes the problem, who shall elect. The earlier answer was: a
select few, such as the wise, the best born, the able. Many people
assume that it was corruption that made such aristocracies fail. By no
means. The best and most effective aristocracy, like the best monarchy,
suffered from lack of knowledge. The rulers did not know or understand
the needs of the people and they could not find out, for in the last
analysis only the man himself, however humble, knows his own condition.
He may not know how to remedy it, he may not realize just what is the
matter; but he knows when something hurts and he alone knows how that
hurt feels. Or if sunk below feeling or comprehension or complaint, he
does not even know that he is hurt, God help his country, for it not
only lacks knowledge, but has destroyed the sources of knowledge.

So soon as a nation discovers that it holds in the heads and hearts of
its individual citizens the vast mine of knowledge, out of which it may
build a just government, then more and more it calls those citizens to
select their rulers and to judge the justice of their acts.

Even here, however, the temptation is to ask only for the wisdom of
citizens of a certain grade or those of recognized worth. Continually
some classes are tacitly or expressly excluded. Thus women have been
excluded from modern democracy because of the persistent theory of
female subjection and because it was argued that their husbands or other
male folks would look to their interests. Now, manifestly, most
husbands, fathers, and brothers will, so far as they know how or as they
realize women's needs, look after them. But remember the foundation of
the argument,--that in the last analysis only the sufferer knows his
sufferings and that no state can be strong which excludes from its
expressed wisdom the knowledge possessed by mothers, wives, and
daughters. We have but to view the unsatisfactory relations of the sexes
the world over and the problem of children to realize how desperately we
need this excluded wisdom.

The same arguments apply to other excluded groups: if a race, like the
Negro race, is excluded, then so far as that race is a part of the
economic and social organization of the land, the feeling and the
experience of that race are absolutely necessary to the realization of
the broadest justice for all citizens. Or if the "submerged tenth" be
excluded, then again, there is lost from the world an experience of
untold value, and they must be raised rapidly to a place where they can
speak for themselves. In the same way and for the same reason children
must be educated, insanity prevented, and only those put under the
guardianship of others who can in no way be trained to speak for
themselves.

The real argument for democracy is, then, that in the people we have
the source of that endless life and unbounded wisdom which the rulers of
men must have. A given people today may not be intelligent, but through
a democratic government that recognizes, not only the worth of the
individual to himself, but the worth of his feelings and experiences to
all, they can educate, not only the individual unit, but generation
after generation, until they accumulate vast stores of wisdom. Democracy
alone is the method of showing the whole experience of the race for the
benefit of the future and if democracy tries to exclude women or Negroes
or the poor or any class because of innate characteristics which do not
interfere with intelligence, then that democracy cripples itself and
belies its name.

From this point of view we can easily see the weakness and strength of
current criticism of extension of the ballot. It is the business of a
modern government to see to it, first, that the number of ignorant
within its bounds is reduced to the very smallest number. Again, it is
the duty of every such government to extend as quickly as possible the
number of persons of mature age who can vote. Such possible voters must
be regarded, not as sharers of a limited treasure, but as sources of new
national wisdom and strength.

The addition of the new wisdom, the new points of view, and the new
interests must, of course, be from time to time bewildering and
confusing. Today those who have a voice in the body politic have
expressed their wishes and sufferings. The result has been a smaller or
greater balancing of their conflicting interests. The appearance of new
interests and complaints means disarrangement and confusion to the older
equilibrium. It is, of course, the inevitable preliminary step to that
larger equilibrium in which the interests of no human soul will be
neglected. These interests will not, surely, be all fully realized, but
they will be recognized and given as full weight as the conflicting
interests will allow. The problem of government thereafter would be to
reduce the necessary conflict of human interests to the minimum.

From such a point of view one easily sees the strength of the demand for
the ballot on the part of certain disfranchised classes. When women ask
for the ballot, they are asking, not for a privilege, but for a
necessity. You may not see the necessity, you may easily argue that
women do not need to vote. Indeed, the women themselves in considerable
numbers may agree with you. Nevertheless, women do need the ballot. They
need it to right the balance of a world sadly awry because of its brutal
neglect of the rights of women and children. With the best will and
knowledge, no man can know women's wants as well as women themselves. To
disfranchise women is deliberately to turn from knowledge and grope in
ignorance.

So, too, with American Negroes: the South continually insists that a
benevolent guardianship of whites over blacks is the ideal thing. They
assume that white people not only know better what Negroes need than
Negroes themselves, but that they are anxious to supply these needs. As
a result they grope in ignorance and helplessness. They cannot
"understand" the Negro; they cannot protect him from cheating and
lynching; and, in general, instead of loving guardianship we see anarchy
and exploitation. If the Negro could speak for himself in the South
instead of being spoken for, if he could defend himself instead of
having to depend on the chance sympathy of white citizens, how much
healthier a growth of democracy the South would have.

So, too, with the darker races of the world. No federation of the world,
no true inter-nation--can exclude the black and brown and yellow races
from its counsels. They must equally and according to number act and be
heard at the world's council.

It is not, for a moment, to be assumed that enfranchising women will not
cost something. It will for many years confuse our politics. It may even
change the present status of family life. It will admit to the ballot
thousands of inexperienced persons, unable to vote intelligently. Above
all, it will interfere with some of the present prerogatives of men and
probably for some time to come annoy them considerably.

So, too, Negro enfranchisement meant reconstruction, with its theft and
bribery and incompetency as well as its public schools and enlightened,
social legislation. It would mean today that black men in the South
would have to be treated with consideration, have their wishes respected
and their manhood rights recognized. Every white Southerner, who wants
peons beneath him, who believes in hereditary menials and a privileged
aristocracy, or who hates certain races because of their
characteristics, would resent this.

Notwithstanding this, if America is ever to become a government built on
the broadest justice to every citizen, then every citizen must be
enfranchised. There may be temporary exclusions, until the ignorant and
their children are taught, or to avoid too sudden an influx of
inexperienced voters. But such exclusions can be but temporary if
justice is to prevail.

The principle of basing all government on the consent of the governed is
undenied and undeniable. Moreover, the method of modern democracy has
placed within reach of the modern state larger reserves of efficiency,
ability, and even genius than the ancient or mediaeval state dreamed of.
That this great work of the past can be carried further among all races
and nations no one can reasonably doubt.

Great as are our human differences and capabilities there is not the
slightest scientific reason for assuming that a given human being of any
race or sex cannot reach normal, human development if he is granted a
reasonable chance. This is, of course, denied. It is denied so volubly
and so frequently and with such positive conviction that the majority of
unthinking people seem to assume that most human beings are not human
and have no right to human treatment or human opportunity. All this goes
to prove that human beings are, and must be, woefully ignorant of each
other. It always startles us to find folks thinking like ourselves. We
do not really associate with each other, we associate with our ideas of
each other, and few people have either the ability or courage to
question their own ideas. None have more persistently and dogmatically
insisted upon the inherent inferiority of women than the men with whom
they come in closest contact. It is the husbands, brothers, and sons of
women whom it has been most difficult to induce to consider women
seriously or to acknowledge that women have rights which men are bound
to respect. So, too, it is those people who live in closest contact with
black folk who have most unhesitatingly asserted the utter impossibility
of living beside Negroes who are not industrial or political slaves or
social pariahs. All this proves that none are so blind as those nearest
the thing seen, while, on the other hand, the history of the world is
the history of the discovery of the common humanity of human beings
among steadily-increasing circles of men.

If the foundations of democracy are thus seen to be sound, how are we
going to make democracy effective where it now fails to
function--particularly in industry? The Marxists assert that industrial
democracy will automatically follow public ownership of machines and
materials. Their opponents object that nationalization of machines and
materials would not suffice because the mass of people do not understand
the industrial process. They do not know:

What to do
How to do it
Who could do it best
or
How to apportion the resulting goods.

There can be no doubt but that monopoly of machines and materials is a
chief source of the power of industrial tyrants over the common worker
and that monopoly today is due as much to chance and cheating as to
thrift and intelligence. So far as it is due to chance and cheating, the
argument for public ownership of capital is incontrovertible even though
it involves some interference with long vested rights and inheritance.
This is being widely recognized in the whole civilized world. But how
about the accumulation of goods due to thrift and intelligence--would
democracy in industry interfere here to such an extent as to discourage
enterprise and make impossible the intelligent direction of the mighty
and intricate industrial process of modern times?

The knowledge of what to do in industry and how to do it in order to
attain the resulting goods rests in the hands and brains of the workers
and managers, and the judges of the result are the public. Consequently
it is not so much a question as to whether the world will admit
democratic control here as how can such control be long avoided when the
people once understand the fundamentals of industry. How can
civilization persist in letting one person or a group of persons, by
secret inherent power, determine what goods shall be made--whether bread
or champagne, overcoats or silk socks? Can so vast a power be kept from
the people?

But it may be opportunely asked: has our experience in electing public
officials led us to think that we could run railways, cotton mills, and
department stores by popular vote? The answer is clear: no, it has not,
and the reason has been lack of interest in politics and the tyranny of
the Majority. Politics have not touched the matters of daily life which
are nearest the interests of the people--namely, work and wages; or if
they have, they have touched it obscurely and indirectly. When voting
touches the vital, everyday interests of all, nominations and elections
will call for more intelligent activity. Consider too the vast unused
and misused power of public rewards to obtain ability and genius for the
service of the state. If millionaires can buy science and art, cannot
the Democratic state outbid them not only with money but with the vast
ideal of the common weal?

There still remains, however, the problem of the Majority.

What is the cause of the undoubted reaction and alarm that the citizens
of democracy continually feel? It is, I am sure, the failure to feel the
full significance of the change of rule from a privileged minority to
that of an omnipotent majority, and the assumption that mere majority
rule is the last word of government; that majorities have no
responsibilities, that they rule by the grace of God. Granted that
government should be based on the consent of the governed, does the
consent of a majority at any particular time adequately express the
consent of all? Has the minority, even though a small and unpopular and
unfashionable minority, no right to respectful consideration?

I remember that excellent little high school text book, "Nordhoff's
Politics," where I first read of government, saying this sentence at the
beginning of its most important chapter: "The first duty of a minority
is to become a majority." This is a statement which has its underlying
truth, but it also has its dangerous falsehood; viz., any minority which
cannot become a majority is not worthy of any consideration. But suppose
that the out-voted minority is necessarily always a minority? Women,
for instance, can seldom expect to be a majority; artists must always be
the few; ability is always rare, and black folk in this land are but a
tenth. Yet to tyrannize over such minorities, to browbeat and insult
them, to call that government a democracy which makes majority votes an
excuse for crushing ideas and individuality and self-development, is
manifestly a peculiarly dangerous perversion of the real democratic
ideal. It is right here, in its method and not in its object, that
democracy in America and elsewhere has so often failed. We have
attempted to enthrone any chance majority and make it rule by divine
right. We have kicked and cursed minorities as upstarts and usurpers
when their sole offense lay in not having ideas or hair like ours.
Efficiency, ability, and genius found often no abiding place in such a
soil as this. Small wonder that revolt has come and high-handed methods
are rife, of pretending that policies which we favor or persons that we
like have the anointment of a purely imaginary majority vote.

Are the methods of such a revolt wise, howsoever great the provocation
and evil may be? If the absolute monarchy of majorities is galling and
inefficient, is it any more inefficient than the absolute monarchy of
individuals or privileged classes have been found to be in the past? Is
the appeal from a numerous-minded despot to a smaller, privileged group
or to one man likely to remedy matters permanently? Shall we step
backward a thousand years because our present problem is baffling?

Surely not and surely, too, the remedy for absolutism lies in calling
these same minorities to council. As the king-in-council succeeded the
king by the grace of God, so in future democracies the toleration and
encouragement of minorities and the willingness to consider as "men" the
crankiest, humblest and poorest and blackest peoples, must be the real
key to the consent of the governed. Peoples and governments will not in
the future assume that because they have the brute power to enforce
momentarily dominant ideas, it is best to do so without thoughtful
conference with the ideas of smaller groups and individuals.
Proportionate representation in physical and spiritual form must come.

That this method is virtually coming in vogue we can see by the minority
groups of modern legislatures. Instead of the artificial attempts to
divide all possible ideas and plans between two great parties, modern
legislatures in advanced nations tend to develop smaller and smaller
minority groups, while government is carried on by temporary coalitions.
For a time we inveighed against this and sought to consider it a
perversion of the only possible method of practical democracy. Today we
are gradually coming to realize that government by temporary coalition
of small and diverse groups may easily become the most efficient method
of expressing the will of man and of setting the human soul free. The
only hindrance to the faster development of this government by allied
minorities is the fear of external war which is used again and again to
melt these living, human, thinking groups into inhuman, thoughtless, and
murdering machines.

The persons, then, who come forward in the dawn of the 20th century to
help in the ruling of men must come with the firm conviction that no
nation, race, or sex, has a monopoly of ability or ideas; that no human
group is so small as to deserve to be ignored as a part, and as an
integral and respected part, of the mass of men; that, above all, no
group of twelve million black folk, even though they are at the physical
mercy of a hundred million white majority, can be deprived of a voice in
their government and of the right to self-development without a blow at
the very foundations of all democracy and all human uplift; that the
very criticism aimed today at universal suffrage is in reality a demand
for power on the part of consciously efficient minorities,--but these
minorities face a fatal blunder when they assume that less democracy
will give them and their kind greater efficiency. However desperate the
temptation, no modern nation can shut the gates of opportunity in the
face of its women, its peasants, its laborers, or its socially damned.
How astounded the future world-citizen will be to know that as late as
1918 great and civilized nations were making desperate endeavor to
confine the development of ability and individuality to one sex,--that
is, to one-half of the nation; and he will probably learn that similar
effort to confine humanity to one race lasted a hundred years longer.

The doctrine of the divine right of majorities leads to almost humorous
insistence on a dead level of mediocrity. It demands that all people be
alike or that they be ostracized. At the same time its greatest
accusation against rebels is this same desire to be alike: the
suffragette is accused of wanting to be a man, the socialist is accused
of envy of the rich, and the black man is accused of wanting to be
white. That any one of these should simply want to be himself is to the
average worshiper of the majority inconceivable, and yet of all worlds,
may the good Lord deliver us from a world where everybody looks like his
neighbor and thinks like his neighbor and is like his neighbor.

The world has long since awakened to a realization of the evil which a
privileged few may exercise over the majority of a nation. So vividly
has this truth been brought home to us that we have lightly assumed that
a privileged and enfranchised majority cannot equally harm a nation.
Insane, wicked, and wasteful as the tyranny of the few over the many may
be, it is not more dangerous than the tyranny of the many over the few.
Brutal physical revolution can, and usually does, end the tyranny of the
few. But the spiritual losses from suppressed minorities may be vast and
fatal and yet all unknown and unrealized because idea and dream and
ability are paralyzed by brute force.

If, now, we have a democracy with no excluded groups, with all men and
women enfranchised, what is such a democracy to do? How will it
function? What will be its field of work?

The paradox which faces the civilized world today is that democratic
control is everywhere limited in its control of human interests. Mankind
is engaged in planting, forestry, and mining, preparing food and
shelter, making clothes and machines, transporting goods and folk,
disseminating news, distributing products, doing public and private
personal service, teaching, advancing science, and creating art.

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