33 pages • 1 hour read
Carter WoodsonThe Mis-Education of the Negro
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1933A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Failure of School to Prepare Black Students
One of the core arguments of Woodson’s text is that public schools in the United States are completely failing to educate Black students; further, Woodson is of the firm belief that this is intentional and by design. Several times in the text, Woodson describes the effectiveness of schools of “control[ling] a man’s thinking” to keep Black people in a subordinate position; that because they have learned inferiority via schools their “education makes it necessary” (15) for them to remain below White people in society.
Woodson is careful to justify this argument with several examples and explanations, including calling into question the character and training of public school teachers as well as to explore many of the inaccuracies present in public school curriculum. In addition, Woodson suggests that because of the institutional racism that Black people encounter beyond a primary or secondary school education, US schools would have to be actively providing a different kind of curriculum and training than what they purported to offer at the time the book was written.
Though the title of the book implies a “mis” education, it seems that Woodson’s real argument is that this “mis-education” is only an education into the culture of the oppressor; he does not believe there is any positive to what is taught in schools. In fact, for much of the book Woodson refers to Black people who have received a full education using quotation marks around the word educated. In this way, his accusation is blatantly clear: Not only are US schools failing to provide an education, the education they are providing is having an active negative impact on the people who receive it.
The Tension Between the “Educated Negro” and the Black Community
An interesting argument present in Woodson’s text is how he explores the tension between “educated” Black people and their communities. Many of Woodson’s predecessors and contemporaries who theorized about the Black experience in the United States had something to say on the topic, including W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, whose “talented tenth” is mentioned in Woodson’s text. Yet Woodson’s argument is novel in that it does not make an argument about the education itself but about the scope of the obligation that one has to one’s community.
It is Woodson’s belief that if the “highly educated” (36) Black person could change their thinking from what they wrongly learned at school and turn towards, rather than “away from the people” (40), they would “solve some of the problems now confronting the race” (36). In other words, once receiving an education through US schools, it would first be necessary to engage in an unlearning of oppressive ways of thinking and then an obligation to contribute back to one’s community. This is a value that Woodson lived out over the course of his life: He came from a family who lived in poverty; he obtained an education; and he took action to fight for the rights of Black people.
Racism Inherent in Curriculum
A key supporting claim of The Mis-Education of the Negro is that it is not only the people in charge of US schools who are responsible for imparting racism to Black students. The curriculum itself is at fault through its very design. Woodson writes, “The thought of the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies” (18). This is done both through omission and through inaccurate description and reporting of historical and scientific events. For example, “From literature the African was excluded altogether. He was not supposed to have expressed any thought worth knowing” (26). In other fields, like science, Black people were portrayed wrongly as being physically inferior, especially in intelligence, to their White or European counterparts. These false aspects of curriculum combine to create a larger effect wherein Black students would not see themselves represented except in ways that would provide a mindset of inferiority.
White Saviorism and False Allyship
Woodson provides consistent critiques of the White people engaged in the education of Black people at the turn of the 20th century. Early on in the text, Woodson describes the ineffective attempts by White missionary teachers who wanted “to transform the Negroes, not to develop them” (25). This White savior attitude, which leads White people to believe that they can make Black people more like them, or—to use another coded word that Woodson references—more “civilized,” is part of what leads to the failure of US public schools to educate those Black students.
In addition, Woodson also critiques those White people who act as false allies: supporting the education of Black people in theory but not in practice, or working with Black students but not believing in the full humanity of those same students. Woodson describes White women at one college who “would bow to him in patronizing fashion when on the campus, but elsewhere […] did not see him” (29). Similarly, Woodson derides White people who, despite working or living in proximity with Black people, would treat “the professions as aristocratic spheres to which Negroes should not aspire” (49). In both cases, White people acting with a sense of false superiority act as though they are supportive of the education and success of Black people while actually contributing to racism and racial inequities.
