Dylan Hales

Despite being one of the godfathers of multiculturalism and somewhat obsessed with pointing out the double standards active in America's race relations, Ishmael Reed remains one of the most entertaining and thought provoking writers in the nation.

It was from Reed that I first encountered a favorable presentation of Booker T. Washington from a leading black leftist. Reed's contention that Washington's call for self-reliance, community control and alternative black institutions was not merely conservative, but a populist program of necessity given the racial climate at the time, stands in stark contrast to the narrative presented by many Marx obsessed lefties of various ethnicity's. To them W.E.B. DuBois was the real black leader of the post-"Civil War" period. Reed is no fan of DuBois and suspects his status with intellectuals has something to do with his "talented tenth" theory, an inherently elitist, quasi-Leninist idea that calls for ten percent of "educated, worthy" blacks to infiltrate white society, forming a vanguard that would somehow eventually lift all boats by virtue of their mere existence.