Final answer:
Booker T. Washington attributed the hardships of travel to poverty and race, noting the weight of systemic oppression on African Americans. His perspective, focused on self-improvement and practical education, led him to downplay the need for societal and federal intervention, emphasizing self-reliance within imposed limits.
Step-by-step explanation:
The student's question relates to the struggles that were attributed to race and poverty by Booker T. Washington. Washington observed that being a poor race in a land of wealth was the utmost hardship, a result of centuries of systematic oppression.
This included both the tangible poverty of lacking financial resources and the intangibles like ignorance of life and business, and a history of degradation. He had not considered the full impact of skin color before due to his focused effort on self-improvement and the education of African Americans under the conditions they faced.
This stance came to be known as accommodation, urging adaptation within the limits imposed by white society and striving for advancements in practical fields like agriculture and mechanics to lay the foundation for eventual equality.
Furthermore, Washington's stance was received with mixed feelings because it suggested that African Americans bear the responsibility to uplift themselves, without acknowledging the systemic barriers and the need for the nation to rectify past and present injustices. In his bid for progressive self-help among African Americans, Washington downplayed the role of the federal government and external societal influences, which he later was criticized for.