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?