Booker T Washington’s Atlanta Compromise speech is one that can definitely be read as degrading, and I will not disagree with that. Though even with the considered, I can understand the pragmatism of such a speech. It is a speech, as the title implies, that is steeped in compromise. He references the slave labour that black American were forced to do on the farm, but rather than drawing attention to the injustice and oppression of this situation, he focuses on how dilligent and hard working the slaves had been. Washington is working within a system where he believes in order to progress and gain power as a race, they do have to appease those who are currently within power, that being the white oppressor. It is one that continues the idea of black American as subservient to whites, but is within a context where Washington seems to believe that is the best option.