The Mis~Education of the Negro

Chapter IV: Education Under Outside Control

Woodson looks deeper into a "Black" education controlled by white administrators. One can only imagine how that started and can see with one's own eyes how it turned out.


"....but if the Negro is to be forced to live in the ghetto he can more easily develop out of it under his own leadership than under that which is super-imposed"

If it is white supremacists who forced Black people to live in ghettos, then of course they are not going to help them out. It can only be done by self-motivated, determined Black people. Besides, I think we all know the relieved feeling we get when our teacher is one of us (and knows it).


"The Negro will never be able to show all of his originality as long as his efforts are directed from without by those who socially proscribe him. Such 'friends' will unconsciously keep him in the ghetto"

Black people can never reach their highest potential if they are led by those who socially, economically, and politically berate and suppress them.


"Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better, but the instruction so far given Negroes in colleges and universities has worked to the contrary"

This is definitely what a "true" education is all about. And remember this book was first published in 1933....what has really changed?

He further proves this point:
"The education of any people should begin with the people themselves, but Negroes thus trained have been dreaming about the ancients of Europe and about those who have tried to imitate them.

Carter Woodson had a different idea for what types of things students should be studying in school. He tells of a Black student who is working on his dissertation, under a white professor.

"For his dissertation this Negro is collecting the sayings of his people in everyday life--their morning greetings, their comments on things which happen around them, their reactions to things which strike them as unusual, and their efforts to interpret life as the panorama passes before them....they will serve the Negro much better than those who are trying to find out whether Henry VIII lusted more after Anne Boleyn than after Catherin of Aragon..."
(More beneficial to learn about everyday Black people than the likes of...them)

If our education is to elevate us it must start WITH us....that includes the things we might deem unimportant such as our sayings and mannerisms we use daily. It really does start with the little things, because they always add up to the bigger things. And these little things are far much more important than........Henry VIII and his sick little love triangle he had going on.

Mis~Education of the Negro

Chapter III: How We Drifted Away From the Truth

"How, then, did the education of the Negro take such a trend"

--What's REALLY good?

Woodson examines various subjects that degrade or ignore Black people which really included ALL subjects. It is very overwhelming.

Geography- "A poet of distinction was selected to illustrate the physical features of the white race,



a bedecked chief of a tribe those of the red,



a proud warrior the brown,



a prince the yellow,



and a savage...the black.


The Negro, of course, stood at the foot of the social ladder.....The description of the various parts of the world was worked out according to the same plan"

--Can we say biased?


Science- "The beginnings of science in various parts of the Orient were mentioned but the Africans' early advancement in this field was omitted"

--No credit what-so-ever. What about Imhotep and the likes?

Language- "In the study of language in school pupils were made to scoff at the Negro dialect....rather than [have it be] directed to study the background of this language language as a broken-down African tongue...which is certainly more important for them than the study of French Phonetics or Historical Spanish Grammar"

--To this day people turn up their nose at those who regularly speak in what they've termed "ebonics"...but learning Spanish is all the rage.


Literature- "From literature the African was excluded altogether. He was not supposed to have expressed any thought worth knowing"

--Yet we are some of the most thoughtful, poignant writers in the world.

Fine Arts- "...They omitted the African influence which scientists now regard as significant and dominant in early Hellas"

--There is great African influence in all the arts, hardly ever recognized, but undeniable.

Law- "Negro law students were told that they belonged to the most criminal element in the country"

--Black man in the news every day for some crime he supposedly committed, while steadily ignoring all the white criminals.


Medical schools- " Negroes were likewise convinced of their inferiority in being reminded of their role as germ carriers. ...without showing that these maladies are more deadly among the Negroes for the reason that they are Caucasian diseases"

--


History- "You might study the history as it was offered in our system from the elementary school throughout the university, and you would never hear Africa mentioned except in the negative"

"The education of the Negro, then, the most important thing in the uplift of the Negroes, is almost entirely in the hands of those who have enslaved them and now segregate them"

--Though legal "segregation" is over, our education was never truly integrated. We still have the most underfunded schools, the worst books, the least amount of resources, and a curriculum in terrible need of a complete makeover. Nothing has changed except a "law". And we see how that's worked out.


"History does not furnish a case of the elevation of a people by ignoring the thought and aspiration of the people thus served"

-- How are you gonna educate a person without respectfully considering who they are, where they're from, and where they're trying to go?