Calling him a race man gives him way too little credit as an intellectual. He had strong positions on a wide variety of topics. But perhaps the one that he stressed the most was his philosophy on the self made man. He had a very strong opinion that hard work and motivation was the key to success, even over luck and opportunity. It was sort of a sink or swim, pull yourself up by your bootstraps mentality.
“Give the negro fair play and let him alone. If he lives, well. If he dies, equally well. If he cannot stand up, let him fall down.”
And he believed that giving assistance in that regard or having a head start was counterproductive and would lead to softness.
“As a general rule, where circumstances do most for men there man will do least for himself; and where man does least, he himself is least. His doing makes or unmakes him.”
This is why I think that in modern times, he would be one of those voices in the black community that would be preaching self reliance and grit and pushing back against the welfare state.
It’s all conjecture of course, but his writings and the transcripts of his speeches really paint a picture of an incredibly old-school conservative to me. I would hate to be the one to have to explain the modern day tax code to him after he got off the time machine.
