Time & Perspective Quote by Ray Stannard Baker

“Measured by any standard, white or black” is doing more than offering praise; it’s staging an argument about who gets to confer greatness in America. Ray Stannard Baker, a Progressive Era journalist who reported extensively on race relations and social reform, writes at a moment when “great men” lists were effectively segregated by custom even when they weren’t by law. By naming “white or black” standards explicitly, he acknowledges the nation’s racial split as a baseline reality, then tries to leap over it with a claim of consensus.

The line also borrows the language of objectivity - “any standard” - as if moral and historical judgment could be quantified like a newsroom fact check. That’s the journalist’s move: a declarative tone that frames evaluation as settled. Yet the subtext is defensive. If Washington “must be regarded” as great, someone is resisting that regard. Baker anticipates the backlash to elevating Booker T. Washington (the likely referent) in a culture that both depended on Black labor and policed Black ambition.

The final promise - “and in the future he will be so honored” - reads like a wager against American amnesia. It’s prophecy as pressure tactic, urging readers to align themselves with the “future” rather than the reactionary present. At the same time, the phrasing reveals a limit of Progressive racial liberalism: it seeks legitimacy by predicting white recognition, treating honor as something history will eventually grant rather than something Black communities already possess. The sentence is a bridge, but it’s also a report on how wide the river still is.