Voice, Trust, and Memory: Marginalized Groups and the Failings of Liberal Representation by Melissa S. Williams

Author:Melissa S. Williams
Language: eng
Format: mobi, pdf
Published: 2009-01-19T06:33:00+00:00

[A] day's experience at the polls convinced me that the "body politic" is not more immaculate than many other bodies ... I saw ignorance enter, unable to read the vote it cast ... I saw Pat, fresh from the Emerald Isle, requiring two sober men to keep him on his legs, enter and deposit his vote for the Democratic candidate amid the loud hurrahs of his fellow-citizens.b'

The leaders themselves constituted further evidence of the capacities of the Black race. Frequently Black leaders were spoken of as "representatives" of their race not because of any political activity on their part, but because their accomplishments were emblematic of Blacks' essential equality In other words, they were symbolically representative of Black potential. An article in Frederick Douglass's New National Era commented on Hiram Revels's performance in the U.S. Senate from this point of view-albeit with only a lukewarm enthusiasm for what he had accomplished for Blacks. "Considering his brief stay and training he did well," the article conceded, although "[w]e could have wished for more activity in a virgin field for Negro talent." Still, "[t]he precedent itself was something. A Negro was occupying a seat in the United States Senate ... as a representative figure of Negro interest, hope and possibility"62

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