“We hear much said in commendation of race pride, race love, and the like. One man is praised for being a race man and another is condemned for not being a race man. In all this talk of race, the motive may be good, but the method is bad. It is an effort to cast out Satan by Beelzebub.” #QotD

Today's quote (from the post 'Frederick Douglass Insisted Identity Politics is Not the Answer') is from from the greatest of all abolitionists, Frederick Douglass -- the slave who freed himself -- speaking after Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation against the error of seeking the remedy for race-based injustice in race-based identity politics:

We hear, since emancipation, much said by our modern coloured leaders in commendation of race pride, race love, race effort, race superiority, race men, and the like. One man is praised for being a race man and another is condemned for not being a race man. In all this talk of race, the motive may be good, but the method is bad. It is an effort to cast out Satan by Beelzebub. … 

    I recognise and adopt no narrow basis for my thoughts, feelings, or modes of action. I would place myself, and I would place you, my young friends, upon grounds vastly higher and broader than any founded upon race or colour. … 

    To those who are everlastingly prating about race men, I have to say: Gentlemen, you reflect upon your best friends. It was not the race or the colour of the negro that won for him the battle of liberty. That great battle was won, not because the victim of slavery was a negro, mulatto, or an Afro-American, but because the victim of slavery was a man and a brother to all other men, a child of God, and could claim with all mankind a common Father, and therefore should be recognised as an accountable being, a subject of government, and entitled to justice, liberty and equality before the law, and everywhere else.

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