boxill self-respect protest

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BERNARD R. BOXILL Self-Respect and Protest

Must a person protest his wrongs? Booker T. Washington and W.E.B.Dubois debated this question at the turn of the century. They did notdisagree over whether protesting injustice was an effective way toright it, but over whether protesting injustice, when one could donothing to right it oneself, was self-respecting. Washington felt that itwas not. Thus, he did not deny that protest could help ameliorate con-ditions or that it was sometimes justified; what he did deny was thata person should keep protesting wrongs committed against him whenhe could not take decisive steps to end them. By insisting on "adver-tising his wrongs" in such cases, he argued, a person betrayed a weak-ness for relying, not on his "own efforts" but on the "sympathy" ofothers. Washington's position was that if a person felt wronged, heshould do something about it; if he could do nothing he should holdhis tongue and wait his opportunity; protest in such cases is only aservile appeal for sympathy; stoicism, by implication, is better. Duboisstrongly contested these views. Not only did he deny that protest is anappeal for sympathy, he maintained that if a person failed to expressopenly his outrage at injustice, however assiduously he worked againstit, he would in the long run lose his self-respect. Thus, he assertedthat Washington faced a "paradox"by insisting both on "self-respect"and on "asilent submission to civic inferiority,"1and he declared that

I am grateful to Tom Hill and Jan Boxill for helpful discussions and to theeditors of Philosophy & Public Affairs for valuable comments and criticisms.i. W.E.B. Dubois, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," in Negro Socialand Political Thought I850-1920, ed. Howard Brotz (New York, I966), p. 5I4.Hereafter cited as Brotz.


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59 Self-Respect and Protest

"only in a . . . persistent demand for essential equality . . . can anypeople show . . . a decent self-respect."2 Like Frederick Douglass, heconcluded that people should protest their wrongs. In this essay I shallexpand upon and defend Dubois' side of the debate. I shall argue thatpersons have reason to protest their wrongs not only to stop injusticebut also to show self-respect and to know themselves as self-respecting.Washington's detractors charge that his depreciation of protest wasappeasement; his defenders maintain that it was prudence. Detractorsand defenders therefore agree that black protest would have been aprovocation to the white South. A provocation arouses an individual'sresentment because it challenges his moral claim to a status he enjoys

and wants to preserve, thus black protest would have challenged thewhite South's justification of the superior status it claimed. Washing-ton did not disapprove of every attempt to effect greater justice, herejected protest in particular. Thus his frequent efforts to urge Americato reform were consistent with his position. Since his remonstrationswere received considerately, and not at all as provocation or protest,they must have avoided making the kind of challenge protest presum-ably presents. Therefore, an analysis of them should suggest whatprotest is.Washington always failed to press the claim that black people arevictims of America's racial injustice. He frequently implied, and some-times stated explicitly, that the white perpetrators of injustice wereeconomically and, especially, morally the people most hurt andmaimed by racial injustice and that, by comparison, the black victimsof injustice suffered only "temporaryinconvenience."3 From this kindof reasoning it is easy to conclude that the morally compelling groundfor reform is to save, not so much the victims of injustice, but its per-petrators because their "degradation"places them in greatest need.The notion that because it implies guilt and ultimately moral degra-dation, inflicting injustice is a greater evil than suffering it is, ofcourse, part of the Christian tradition and before that, the Socratic.Washington seems, however, to be one of the few to use it as an argu-ment for social reform. Whether he really believed it is completelyirrelevant. What is pertinent is that this was the consideration he

2. W.E.B. Dubois, ed. William M. Tuttle, Jr. (New Jersey, I973), p. 48.3. Booker T. Washington, "Democracy and Education," in Brotz, p. 370.


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thought prudent to present to America and that he hoped would beefficacious in motivating reform. This consideration, though urged in-sistently, did not arouse resentment. America, apparently did not mindbeing accused of degradation-as long as its affairs, its advancement,and its moral salvation remained the center of moral concern. For, asI have indicated, Washington did explicitly draw the conclusion thatthe morally compelling ground for reform was the moral salvation ofwhite America.4The idea that being a perpetrator is worse than being a victim is,of course, true in the sense that the person guilty of perpetrating in-justice is morally worse than the person who must endure it. But, itdoes not follow from this that the perpetrator of injustice suffersgreater evil than his victim or that the ground for seeking justice is tosave the unjust man. As I have argued in another essay, such a positioncan be maintained only if the victim has no rights. For, if the victimhas rights then the perpetrator's duty is not to avoid degrading him-self but to respect those rights. To claim that the victim of injusticehas rights is thus to challenge the transgressor's arrogant assumptionthat his own advancement, economic or moral, is the sole legitimateobject of social policy. Washington never challenged white America'sassumption that its advancement justified the reform he advocated,because he never claimed that black Americans had rights. Black pro-test would have affirmed that they do.Because protest emphasizes the wrongs of the victim and declaresthat redress is a matter of the highest urgency, a person who insistentlyprotests against his own condition may seem to be self-centered andself-pitying. He appears to dwell self-indulgently on his grievances andto be seeking the commiseration of others. Washington, for example,criticized Frederick Douglass for constantly reminding black peopleof "theirsufferings"5and suspected that persistent protesters relied on"thespecial sympathy of the world"rather than on "theirown efforts.","This is an important charge since the self-respecting person is self-reliant and avoids self-pity. It is not answered by the claim that people4. Ibid.5. Booker T. Washington, "The Intellectuals and The Boston Mob," in Brotz,p. 425.6. Ibid., p. 429.


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Self-Respect and Protest

have rights, for having rights does not necessarily justify constantreiteration that one has them. The charge is answered, however, by acloser consideration of what is involved in claiming a right. The ideathat the protester seeks sympathy is unlikely, since in claiming hisrights he affirms that he is claiming what he can demand and exact,and sympathy cannot be demanded and exacted. The idea that theprotesteris self-pitying is likewise implausible, since a person who feelspity for himself typically believes that his condition is deplorable andunavoidable, and this is not all what the protester affirms. On thecontrary, he affirms that his condition is avoidable, he insists that whathe protests is precisely the illegitimate, and hence avoidable, inter-ference by others in the exercise of his rights, and he expresses thesentiment, not of self-pity, but of resentment. Protest could be self-indulgent if it were a demand for help, and it could show a lack ofself-reliance if it claimed powerlessness. But, in insisting on his rights,the protestor neither demands help nor claims powerlessness. He de-mands only noninterference. What Frederick Douglass protestedagainst, for example, was interference. He scorned supererogatoryhelp. "Do nothing with us," he exclaimed, "And, if the Negro cannotstand on his own legs, let him fall."7It follows from the above that when a person protests his wrongs,he expresses a righteous and self-respecting concern for himself. If,as we assume, the self-respecting person has such a concern for him-self, it follows that he will naturally be inclined to protest his injuries.Would he always have good reason actually to give vent to his indigna-tion? Protest, it seems, is the response of the weak. It is not a warningof retaliation. The strong man does not waste too much time protestinghis injuries; he prevents them. Why then should the weak, but self-respecting, person protest his wrongs? Surely if either protest or whin-ing will prevent injury, the self-respecting person will protest ratherthan whine. For protest is self-respecting. Though it cannot compelthe transgressor to reform, it tells him that he should be compelled toreform and that he is being asked no favors. But, if as Washington'sdefenders aver, protest often provokes persecution, why should a weakand vulnerable people protest? What good could it do? If it will help,

7. Frederick Douglass, "What the Black Man Wants," in Brotz, p. 283.


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62 Philosophy & Public Affairs

why can't a self-respecting people pretend servility? But it seems thatpeople do protest their wrongs, even when it is clear that this will bringno respite and, instead, cause them further injury. W.E.B. Duboisexhorted black people, "even when bending to the inevitable," to "bendwith unabated protest."8 s this mere bravado? Or does a person withself-respect have a reason to protest over and above the hope that itwill bring relief ?It may be argued that he does; that he should protest to make othersrecognize that he has rights. But, though a person who believes he hasa right not to be unjustly injured also believes that others wrong himif they injure him unjustly and that they should be restrained fromdoing so, it is not clear that he must want them to share his convictionthat he has this right. Why should he care what they believe? Why,just because he believes that he has a right, should he desire that oth-ers share his belief? There is no reason to suppose that the self-respect-ing person must want others to believe what he believes. Though hebelieves that the morally respectable ground for not injuring him isthat he has a right not to be injured, it does not follow that he mustwant others to act on morally respectable grounds. Self-respect is amorally desirable quality but the self-respecting person need not be asaint. He need not want to make others moral. To this it may be ob-jected that he nevertheless has a good reason to convince others of hisrights, because the surest and most stable protection from unjustinjury is for others to be restrained by solid moral convictions. Thismay be true. But it does not show that a person will want others torespect him just because he respects himself. Even the person whofails to respect himself may want the surest and most stable protectionfrom unjust injury, and thus may want others to respect him. And,in general, for the protection of his rights, the self-respecting personcannot depend too heavily on the moral restraint of others. His self-reliance impels him to seek the means of self-defense. Secure in theconviction that it is legitimate to defend himself, he is satisfied ifothers respect him because they fear him.Alternately, it may be proposed that the self-respecting person willwant others to respect him because he wants to remain self-respecting.

8. W.E.B. Dubois, p. 43.


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For unopposed injustice invites its victims to believe that they have novalue and are without rights. This confident invitation may make eventhe self-respecting fear that their sense of their own value is onlyprejudiced self-love. It may therefore be argued that since protest isan affirmation of the rights of the victim, the self-respecting victimof injustice will protest to make others recognize, and in that wayreassure him, that he has rights. FrederickDouglass, for example, oncereferred to this acknowledgment as the "all important confession."But, though the self-respecting need to reassure themselves that theyhave rights, they would disdain this kind of reassurance. It is inappro-priate because unanimous acknowledgment of a proposition does notimply its truth but only that everyone avows it. It is not self-respectingbecause it shows a lack of self-reliance. The self-respecting person can-not be satisfied to depend on the opinions of others. This is not toquestion the proposition that it is difficult to believe what everyonedenies and easy to believe what everyone affirms. It is to say that, evenwhile he concedes this, the self-respecting person will want to have hisconviction of his worth rationally based.But it is not clear that the self-respecting person has good reasonto protest, even if he does want others to respect him. Washington, forexample, understood that social acknowledgment was important butcondemned protest. He argued that to be acknowledged as worthycitizens black people would do better to develop the qualities and vir-tues that would make them economically valuable members of society.Washington was right. For though protest is an uncompromising claimthat the victim of some injury has a right not to be injured, it does notfollow that protest is therefore a likely way of getting others to agree.To affirm something, no matter how sincerely and passionately, maybe an indifferent way of persuading others of it. And protest is, essen-tially, an affirmationthat a victim of injury has rights. It is not an argu-ment for that position. Typically, people protest when the time forargument and persuasion is past. They insist, as Dubois put it, thatthe claim they protest is "an outrageous falsehood,"'10nd that it would

9. Frederick Douglass, "What are the Colored People Doing For Themselves?"in Brotz, p. 208.io. W.E.B. Dubois, "The Evolution of the Race Problem," in Brotz, p. 549.


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be demeaning to argue and cajole for what is so plain. Responding toa newspaper article that claimed "The Negro"was "Not a Man,"Fred-erick Douglass disdainfully declared, "I cannot, however, argue, Imust assert.""1It may be objected that though protest is not plausibly designed topersuade others that the victim of some injury has value or rights, itis designed to compel them to acknowledge that he is a moral being.This issue is raised by Orlando Patterson in his essay "Towarda Futurethat has no Past."12 Speaking of a slave's stealing as "an assertion ofmoral worth"-that is, as protest-Patterson points out that by scream-ing, "Youare a thief," the master admits that the slave is a moral being,since it is in the act of punishing him as a thief that the master mostemphatically avows the slave to be a moral being. If the slave's steal-ing is indeed an act of protest then, as I have indicated, protest neednot be designed to promote conciliation. Further, since what the slavewants to hear is that he is a thief, his aim is surely not to be acknowl-edged as an economically valuable asset but as a being who is respon-sible for his acts. Finally, though this concession is made loudly andpublicly and, by all accounts, sincerely, it is nevertheless absurd andparadoxical. For though the master calls the slave a thief, and thus amoral being, he continues to treat him as a piece of property. Still, itmay seem that the slave wins a victory. At least, even if it is painful,he enjoys the satisfaction of forcing a most unwilling agent to treathim as a moral being. This argument has considerable force. For a self-respecting person no doubt desires to be treated as a moral being. Butit is not clear that a master must, in consistency, deny that a slave isa moral being. If he wants to justify himself, what he must deny isthat the slave has rights. And, even if to be consistent he must denythat the slave is a moral being, it is not clear that the slave can alwaysget the master to call him "thief."Or, even if he does, it is not clearthat the master must admit that he uses the word in any but an ana-logical sense. And, it is not true that property cannot be punished

ii. Frederick Douglass, "The Claims of the Negro Ethnologically Considered,"in Brotz, p. 228.I2. Orlando Patterson, "Toward a Future That Has No Past-Reflections onthe Fate of Blacks in the Americas," in The Public Interest, no. 27 (Spring

1972), p. 43.


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without absurdity. Animals, for example, are routinely punished with-out absurdity and with no implication that they are anything but prop-erty.

It may finally be argued that affirmingone's rights may be necessaryto keeping the sense of one's value simply because doing so is anessential part of having self-respect. This must first be qualified. Itmay be false that one believes that one has rights. Thus, since lyingcannot be an essential part of anything valuable, merely affirmingthat one has rights cannot, without qualification, be essential to keep-ing the sense of one's value. The argument must therefore be thatprotest is necessary to keeping the sense of one's value if one believesthat one has rights. But why should one affirm what one believes,however deeply and firmly one believes it? To this it may be proposedthat the self-respecting person wishes to seem to be what he is; he is,we may say, authentic. But, though authenticity may be a virtue, itis not clear why the self-respecting person must be authentic. To saythat someone has self-respect is certainly not to say that he has allthe virtues. Further, it is not evident that authenticity is necessarilyone of the qualities that the self-respecting person believes to be valu-able about himself. Neither is it clear, without further argument, thatthe self-respecting person's authenticity can be derived from the factthat he is convinced he has rights. Secret convictions seem possible.In the second place, even if the self-respecting person is authentic andwishes to seem to be what he is, it does not follow that he has to saywhat he is, unless saying what he is, is part of what he is. But this latterproposition is just what is at issue. The self-respecting person may pro-test because he believes he has rights. He does not believe he has valueonly if he protests.Besides meting out injury incommensurate with the victim's worthand rights, uncontested and unopposed injustice invites witnesses tobelieve that he is injured just because he is wicked or inferior. Oppres-sors, no doubt, desire to be justified. They want to believe more thanthat their treatment of others is fitting; they want those they mistreatto condone their mistreatment as proper, and therefore offer induce-ments and rewards toward that end. Thus, even the self-respectingperson may be tempted at least to pretend servility for some relief. But


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he will find that such pretense has its dangers; it shakes his confidencein his self-respect. I shall argue that the self-respecting person in suchstraits must, in some way, protest to assure himself that he has self-respect.Since self-respect is valuable, it contributes to an individual's worth.But a person can have self-respect and few other good qualities. Sinceall men have inalienable rights, there is always a rational basis forself-respect, but a person may have an inflated and false sense of hisworth. He may be utterly convinced, on what he falsely believes to berational grounds, that he is much better than he really is. He may bemean and cowardly and cut an absurd figure, but insofar as he hasfaith in himself, he has self-respect. Consequently, when an individualdesires to know whether he has self-respect, what he needs is not evi-dence of his worth in general but evidence of his faith in his worth. Iargued earlier that protest is an indifferent way of getting others toacknowledge and thus to confirm that one has worth. But it may be anexcellent way of confirming that one has faith in one's worth. For, asthe preceding discussion should suggest, evidence of faith in one'sworth is different from evidence of one's worth in general.A person with a secure sense of his value has self-respect. This doesnot mean that he cannot lose it. It is a contradiction in terms, however,to suppose that anyone with self-respect would want to lose it. A personwould want to lose his self-respect only if he feared that his belief in hisworth was false or irrational, or, for some other reason, undesirable.But a person cannot be securely convinced of what he fears is falseor irrational. And if a person believes that something has worth, hecannot believe that it is desirable to be ignorant of it. Hence, the per-son with self-respect cannot want to lose it.Moreover, the self-respecting person cannot be oblivious to, or un-concerned about, the question of his self-respect. He must be awarethat he believes he has value and that this is important. A person canhave a belief and be unaware of having it, or have a sense of securityand be unable to specify what he feels secure about. But the self-respecting person does not merely believe in his worth or have a vaguesense of security. He feels secure about his belief in his worth. Thus,since a person cannot feel certain about something and be unaware ofwhat he feels certain about, the self-respecting person must be aware


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that he believes he has value. And, for reasons already stated, he mustbelieve that this belief is desirable. This does not mean that a personwith self-respect must be continuously agitated by the fear of losingit. But it would be a mistake to urge further that only the confident,self-assured person who can take his self-respect for granted reallydoes have self-respect. This would be to confuse self-respect with self-confidence. People sometimes do lose their self-respect. Thus to theextent that he is reflective, the person with self-respect will concede thepossibility of losing it. And, though he may be confident of retainingit, he need not be. For, what he is sure of is that he has worth; notthat he will always be sure of this. Whether he has this confidencedepends on matters other than his self-respect. Though he may not beservile, a person may properly fear that, because of what he is doing orbecause of what is happening to him, he will become servile.

He may also fear that he is already servile. If he has self-respect hewill be aware that he entertains the belief that he has worth and thathe should be convinced of it, though he need not be sure that he isconvinced of it. For he will probably also know that servile people toocan value and persuade themselves that they have the self-respectwhich they lack. Thus, not only may a person with self-respect fearlosing it; he may fear not having it. And this is not untypical. Theearly Christian may have had faith but doubt that he had it; to abolishhis doubt he often sought the test of martyrdom. The courageous manmay test his courage in order to know it. Though such tests may inci-dentally develop qualities they are meant to test, their main functionis to discover to the agent a faith he may have, but of which he isnot certain.In sum, a person with self-respect may lose it. He may not be con-fident of always having it. He may not even be sure that he really hasit. But if he does have self-respect, he will never be unconcerned aboutthe question of his self-respect. Necessarily he will want to retain it.But no one will be satisfied that he has something unless he knowsthat he has it. Hence, the self-respecting person wants to know that heis self-respecting.

To know this he needs evidence. The need for such evidence must beespecially poignant to the self-respecting person when, to preventinjury, he pretends servility. Observers often cannot agree on how to


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interpret such behavior. The "Sambo"personality, for example, is sup-posed to typify the good humored, ostensibly servile black slave. Sambowas apparently very convincing. In Slavery: A Problem in AmericanInstitutional Life, Stanley Elkins suggests that Sambo's "docility"and"humility"reflected true servility. On the other hand, other historianssuspect that Sambo was a fraud. Patterson, for example, argues thatSambo's fawning laziness and dishonesty was his way of hitting backat the master's system without penalty. Thus, Patterson sees Sambo's"clowning"as a mask, "to salvage his dignity,"a "deadly serious game,"in which "the perfect stroke of rebellion must ideally appear to themaster as the ultimate act of submission." Patterson is persuasive, buttrue servility is possible. Sambo could have been genuinely servile.Certainly every effort was made to make him so. There is thereforeroom for uncertainty. Further, it is not clear that Sambo can himselfdefinitively settle the question. The master could have reason to suspectthat Sambo's antics were a pretense only if he had evidence that theywere. But if he is to know that he is not servile, Sambo too needs suchevidence.It may be pointed out that if Sambo's ostensible servility was hisway of "hitting back," he was providing evidence of self-respect allalong. But this must be qualified. Unless it is already known to bepretense, apparent servility is evidence of servility. If Sambo gave aperfect imitation of servility, neither he nor his master could have anyreason to think he was anything but servile. If his pretense is to providehim with evidence of his self-respect it must, to some discernibleextent, betray him. Patterson may be right that the "perfect stroke ofrebellion must seem to the master as the ultimate act of submission,but the deception must succeed, not because it is undetectable, butbecause the master is so blinded by his own arrogance that he cannotsee that what is presented as abasement is really thinly disguisedaffront.If the above argument is sound, only consummate artistry can per-mit a person continuously and elaborately to pretend servility and stillknow that he is self-respecting. Unless it is executed by a master, theevidence of servility will seem overwhelming and the evidence of self-

13. Ibid.


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respect too ambiguous. But, as I have argued, the self-respecting per-son wants to know he is self-respecting. He hates deception and pre-tense because he sees them as obstacles to the knowledge of himselfas self-respecting. If only occasionally, he must shed his mask.This may not be so easy. It is not only that shedding the mask ofservility may take courage, but that if a person is powerless it will notbe easy for him to make others believe that he is taking off a mask.People do not take the powerless seriously. Because he wants to knowhimself as self-respecting, the powerless but self-respecting person isdriven to make others take him seriously. He is driven to make hisclaim to self-respect unmistakable. Therefore, since nothing as un-equivocally expresses what a person thinks he believes as his ownemphatic statement, the powerless but self-respecting person willdeclare his self-respect. He will protest. His protest affirms that he hasrights. More important, it tells everyone that he believes he has rightsand that he therefore claims self-respect. When he has to endurewrongs he cannot repel and feels his self-respect threatened, he willpublicly claim it in order to reassure himself that he has it. His reas-surance does not come from persuading others that he has self-respect.It comes from using his claim to self-respect as a challenge.

Thus, even when transgressors will not desist, protest is neverthelessdirected at them. For the strongest challenge to a claim to self-respectand one which can consequently most surely establish it as true willmost likely come from those most anxious to deny that it has anybasis. Protest in such straits is often unaccompanied by argumentshowing that the protester has rights, for what is relevant to his claimto self-respect is not whether he has rights but whether he believes hehas them.14

I4. I have argued that the person with self-respect has a special reason toprotest wrongs committed against him. It may be asked whether he also has aspecial reason to protest wrongs committed against others. As I have indicated,though he possesses one important quality-self-respect itself-he need not possessall or most of the other morally desirable qualities. He need not, for example, bealtruistic or care much about others. If he does conceive of himself as havingduties to aid others, however, he will want to defend his right to be that sort ofperson and will accordingly protest interferences with that right. Typically, hewill have occasion to do this when his efforts to prevent wrongful injury toothers are interfered with.

boxill self-respect protest

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