Ethiop (William J. Wilson) to Frederick Douglass, January 17, 1852
From Our Brooklyn Correspondent.
My Dear Douglass:—Position is everything. It enables us to see or not to see.—Now, while I pretend to do nothing more than my neighbors, yet, by peculiarity of position, I am enabled to take a better survey of matters. Even that old fellow, Communipaaw, who boasts his skill in roots with which he intends to cure you, my dear Douglass—even this old Sage himself, cannot so well overlook affairs—and for this reason, his wigwam is located far away among the boggs of the Jerseys - my hut is on Brooklyn heights. While he, with the great Orb of day peering in his face, is compelled to strain his vision in taking a morning survey of Gotham. I, with that bright Eye of the morning in the back-ground, gilding beautifully all before me and around, have but to look down from my pleasant height upon that goodly city; witness its first day-break revelings; news boys croak out the merits of their respective papers. Presently all is astir, all is clatter. Miserable loafers rub their eyes and shake their tattered garments to the breeze; and as it freshens, wretched women pull their more wretched apologies for coverings closely about them, shiveringly pass on; squallid children, once white, but now difficult to tell of what color, and painful to behold, crouch before each successive blast as it winds itw way to their half-naked bodies. Alas, it is a sad reflection, that amidst so much brick and mortar—amid so much splendor, there is so much of misery and degradation; society is organically diseased here. I venture to say that there is more wretchedness, more misery, more degradation, here in this me-
tropolis amidst the superfluity of philanthropy and religion, than can be found in any whole nation outside of Christendom. Vice and folly stalk abroad at noon day, and christianity hides her head behind the veil of the temple until each returning Sabbath morning. Society here needs renovating, soul and body; and it is the office-work of those to whom I belong to effect it; this is their true misison. Exactly from my position, then I see, as I last week mentioned, the necessity of a monied class among us here; and in proportion as it increases will our condition be made easier, and we tend towards a better state.
But let us com down to the present state of things. I cannot ride in the stage, says one. I am kicked from the steamboat table, says another. I am dragged from the cars, says a third! Now, bad as this kicking or dragging process is, who that has had a moment's reflection upon the subject, but knows that a black aristocracy, and nothing short of it, would soon remedy it. Steamboat and railroad stocks would, in the regular course of things, be as much in their hands as others. Their interests and the white's would be in common; and of necessity, an interchange and similarity of feelings would exist between the parties. In fine, the present party lines would be broken up, and others drawn–not black and white, but thrifty and thriftless; for this, dispite of all that may be said to the contrary, is but the true bent of our social polity, which nothing can change. As a class at present, we form a horde of menials; whose habits and methods of thoughts, upon what makes up the sum and
substance of this community's greatness, are so opposite to those along side of whom we claim a seat in the stage, the car, the steamboat and the hotel, that I, for one, am not the least surprised at the rejection. Think of the mass of us occupying degraded stations—the exceptions but perfect the rule. True, the whites have their poor and degraded; but they have also their rich and elevated, whose number is legion. To them, as yet, we present but one phase - a low flat surface, across which the few bright lights we have as yet fail so much as to shed a single glimmer, so far distant are they. Nor will our position change until the aforesaid monied class becomes large, prominent and influential, and makes its presence felt both among us and the community outside of us. To the one, offering encouragements and affording substantial aid; to the other, acting as a sort of rectifier of errors—a pruner of excesses; a grand conservator of the whole social machinery. It is scarcely necessary to point out the duties and obligations of such a class. Many and various as they are, once obtaining its legitimate position, it will as naturally discharge them as do the trees put forth their leaves in summer, or their fruits in due season. Unpalatable as it may seem at first sight to us (more so, perhaps, than to the whites,) owing to our position, still a black aristocracy must be had if we would use the best means possible to catch up in the race we are running. I do not mean such an aristocracy as has been attempted, and at which, had it not been of mushroom growth and existence, I should most assuredly have pointed my finger ere this, and not without effect. But it is said that so deeply do we feel degraded, so depressed are we by weight
of the wrongs heaped upon us, that we can scarcely look up, much less rise up. Now, precisely to the contrary is the fact. The word depression applies to us in proportion only as we rise toward the common level, and is understood by us proportionately as we rise above that level. This is a fixed law of our nature. As a man acquires, the greater is his desire for greater acquisitions; and the nearer he approaches the goal of his ambition, not only is his progress the more rapid, but the better he understands the whole range of said acquisitions, and the deeper his appreciation of them. Precisely here is our present difficulty. We feel the need of too little. We are not fairly started yet. We have not made sufficient head-way yet to make our movement respectable.—We have not got steam up enough yet; this is all.
Let us then knock in the head, forever, the
Dogma "that, because we feel depressed we cannot rise." In exact proportion as we feel, we shall rise. As a stone in its descent, is accelerated not only by its own upward pressure, but in addition by the depths of our sensibility of our depression; and in ratio as those sensibilities deepen; and will they deepen in ratio as we ascend: hence the higher we rise the more rapid our progress.
Yet in the face of all logic, philosophy and common sense, our opponents speak of this matter with an ignorance almost unbearable.
When recurs to my mind the fulsome stuff vaunted forth upon it by the pale, lean, narrow, shriveled up souls, it is with pity and contempt, mingled in equal proportions, that I remember them. But I must stop. Space only permits me to say, the Anti-Colonization meeting went off gloriously; thanks to the committee of 13. In fact they are becoming the nucleus round which most of what is of any worth here, clustre. They are also moving vigorously in the matter of the Albany Convention; they have worked thus far with a master hand.
Parties, Ball routes, Assemblies, Soiries and cold colations at noon day, are all the go here this season, among the fashionable Black circles. They afford to the participants much frolick, and more head-ache and heart-ache; and the most fun for Ethiop than anything now adrift hereabouts.
More anon, Ethiop.
Brooklyn Heights, Jan. 17, 1852.