Excluded Wisdom

It isn’t too often that we can peer back into history and find an instance that captures the zeitgeist of our current situation. 1920 and 2008 seem too far away to bear much, if any influence upon each other. 88 years, about two generations and a host of social and political changes have occurred since the early 20^th century—some would even argue that one is the antithesis of the other. Watching the democratic candidates for presidency amidst their splendors and squalors, blindness and insights, affections and incipience, stirred not disgust or some form of partisan (racial or otherwise) fervor within me but the question of how far America is willing to trust the minds it has trained and the promises to uphold democracy that it professes to itself and the world?

With the frontrunners of the Democratic Party, Senators Obama and Clinton, the country and the world has rare opportunity to see the abstraction of democracy inch closer to its theoretical promise more so than ever before. In 1920, W.E.B. Du Bois published Darkwater within which was a chapter entitled “On the Ruling of Men” where he highlighted a peculiar dichotomy of the history of democracy—one which we can see manifest between the two democratic candidates that the light of democracy shines brightest upon today.

Today we are hearing Experience should be the prerequisite in the governing of people. We are also hearing that Judgment is what counts most. We almost forget that not too far from yesterday it was only free white men with property that could at least vote and at most dare to hold office—this seemed to be the guise of yesterday’s democracy—limiting the scope in debated issues and leaving the rest not heard, but spoken for. Today’s democracy and its future arguably rests upon what W.E.B. Du Bois elegantly describes in his 1920 work as “excluded wisdom”. To make experience a qualification for the franchise (as he calls it) would stop the spread of democracy and make political power hereditary, a prerequisite of a class, caste, race or sex.

In every modern state and in every generation, voting cycle and those who want to head the franchise, there must be those who many think are inexperienced and undeserving as well as those who think lack proper judgment that head to the voting booths and stand on the national pulpit and must experiment in various methods in solving problems. Thus and only thus, Du Bois says, will civilization grow.