Abe Lincoln @ 199

[DSTCHAOS]

Sidebar:
Unfortunately, the great Frederick Douglass follower, Booker T. Washington also used slurs and negative portrayals of blacks to gain white support. His excuse was that he needed to align himself with whites so the larger cause of economic independence and the Tuskegee Institute could be met. While Douglass was also a former slave and uber-assimilationist, he did not believe in demeaning his people for the larger cause.

Douglass and Washington both provide some great insights on progressiveness, that I think should be combined with approaches such as Du Bois that aren't assimilationist. Just providing historical context for why things sometimes happen the way they do. Change is half about great visionaries and half about the context in which change is both demanded and possible.

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by DSTCHAOS

Just providing historical context for why things sometimes happen the way they do. Change is half about great visionaries and half about the context in which change is both demanded and possible.

This is a much more interesting discussion, in my mind, than the OP (if only b/c the OP was vague and didn't really foster much besides "look how far we've come"; no offense intended, DS) - contextualizing the work of the great visionaries can be incredibly difficult, because it is often viewed as denigrating their work by those who revere the visionary. However, I think it's important to realize that no change happens in a vacuum - Frederick Douglass shaped his world, but he was shaped by it as well, and his audience had to receive the message in the same way that he had to send it.

I don't mean to be glib, but perception is very much reality on these issues - maybe that is the real connection between historical heroes in the civil rights movement and the candidacy of Barack Obama: they are creating perceptual changes on a more powerful level than any before, while also benefiting from perceptual changes and openness that may not have been available to those before.

I realize this is sort of a lame "walking on the shoulders of giants"-type of intellectual onanism, but I think it goes beyond that. I think the one of the great skills of visionaries is the ability to find subtle points of attack and subtle changes in perception, then exploit those changes for the greater benefit. Timing is a talent, and perhaps the most important talent when it comes to glacial societal change.