The Unprivileged

Digitized by the Moorland-Spingarn Research Center at Howard University in 2017. ISBN: ajc_345. The original page scans can be found in Howard University’s Digital Collection, “Published Materials by Anna Julia Cooper”: https://dh.howard.edu/ajc_published/12 .

A noted writer a while ago likened society to a stage coach on which the “Privileged Classes” had all seats reserved for themselves, their baggage, their dogs and their golf sticks. The common people drew the coach on its toilsome way, thro [sic] mire and mud, over ruts and stones. Gaily riding on top, amusing, chattering, pampering, petting, grumbling at every jolt, but care-free an indifferent so long as the roadway was smooth, the Privileged knew little and cared less about the common herd that dragged the car.

Interesting food for thot [sic] as regards group psychology or individual attitudes, the analogy does not hold as a generalization. It is not to be derived that too often we wrap ourselves in smug satisfaction as long as our own head is above water and pharasically [sic] thank God we arc not as other men, while our brother is left to lift his load unheeded and alone; or we throw a beggar a bone to have it advertised as charity or as philanthropy according to the size and succulence of the bone, and yet sordid selfishness is not characteristic of the social order of our generation; and the self centered passengers, laughing and chaffing luxuriously in the human drawn stage coach would be a libel on modern thot and conduct if taken as a generalization.

Generalizing

Nothing so beclouds our thought and so disastrously warps our understanding and our judgments as the devastating habit of generalizing. It has been well said that the Israelites managed to come thru the wilderness only because there were no statisticians along to prove that it couldn’t be done. Human nature is ever variable, ever changing and no specimens have yet been found that squared algebraically with the most perfect formula. The typical man, woman, group, race simply does not exist; and therefore, the most dangerous leaders of thought and painters of society are the dogmatists who undertake to lay down rules and deduce general principles from social statistics.

The fact is that among the hardest working members of society today are the very rich men, and those bearing the heaviest, most nerve-racking strain of pulling the coach are people who are thot to be riding on top and cracking the whip. True servants and benefactors of humanity are those who regard the great accumulations from their own thrift and foresight as a sacred trust to benefit mankind and who devote that same power of intelligence and efficiency of organization, which in the first place rendered them captains of industry and directors of men, to the foundation and extension of those big philanthropies which permanently bless and enrich the race of men, and which never could have been devised in a purely communal organization. It is a mistake to suppose that the “man farthest down” if put on top will be uniformly wise and good; or that all wealth is predatory and therefore a redistribution of it count by count would eliminate forever all selfishness from the world. Wealth with philanthropy has actually done more for the world,—stamping out diseases, spreading intelligence and giving the human race a better and brighter chance in the struggle for existence and pursuit of happiness than the rosiest dreams of the communists can picture as resulting from their wild schemes of unseating the efficient and handing over the reins to a yelping multitude.

Plead for Justice

The poor man’s plea and every man’s plea should he unceasing and unvarying for Justice—indeed this is not only his right but his sacred duty. Justice for all— not merely his class, clique, or color, but an equal and impartial administration of law; a free chance in the pursuit of happiness. The unprivileged need not be inarticulate—Self-expression becomes a duty—but let him not imagine that the blessing he seeks is secured or enhanced by hatreds and antagonisms, or by abrogating all social retraint [sic] and disregarding established rights. Anarchy has absolutely nothing to offer the poor man or the social weaklings. While it proposes to cut the earth from under the classes, it has only the law of the jungle to substitute for the self interested orderliness of Big Business,—unorganized guerrilla selfishness for selfishness disciplined and broadened by experience and training. As well stand unshieled [sic] before the car of Moloch as to date the vicissitudes of force in the hegemony set up by anarchists.

Interests there always will be— clamoring, even dashing interests. It would be Utopia to find these interests at once reasonable and altruistic. Self-seeking they naturally are and will be. Adjustment and mutual regard for the other fellow’s interest is the acme of the aim and purpose of good administration. Despotism cannot endure. It may have its day, but inexorably it carries within itself the seeds of its own destruction. All history proves this, common sense supports and bears it out. No individual, no class, no color can ultimately and finally hog it all. The irreconcilables must give way at last and be content to take what they can get, and the "peace makers" who are "blessed" will be those who preach sanity in judging another's viewpoint and a sweet reasonableness in persistently maintaining one's own.