fbpx

10 Takeaways From Carter G Woodson’s ‘The Mis-Education Of The Negro’

10 Takeaways From Carter G Woodson’s ‘The Mis-Education Of The Negro’

Mis-Education Of The Negro

Carter G. Woodson wrote of America’s most important books, “The Mis-Education of the Negro.” He is also credited with being the founder of Black History Month. Some of Woodson’s unpublished work, discovered in 2005 by a Howard University history professor, revealed there predecesor to “The Mis-Education of the Negro.” Scott found a typewritten manuscript titled “The Case of the Negro.”

“Scott’s research revealed that ‘The Case of the Negro’ had been written at the request of two Black men, Channing Tobias and Jesse Moorland, who were prominent in the YMCA’s movement for African Americans. They asked Woodson to write a paper rebutting a 1912 book, ‘Present Forces in Negro Progress,’ written by W.D. Weatherford,” The Washington Post reported.

Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 64: Tunde Ogunlana

Part 1: Jamarlin talks to Tunde Ogunlana, the CEO of Axial Family Advisors, a wealth planning firm. We discuss what an inverted yield curve usually means in the bond market.

Weatherford was a white patron of Black intellectuals, but according to Scott, Watherford was also racist, having called Black people “a tropical race best fit for thriving in Africa.”

“The Case of the Negro” looked at white racism and struck a proud defense  for the Black race. 

“Exactly what the Negro is in the anthropological sense is no more a perplexing question than the racial origin of the so-called white man,” Woodson wrote. “The average Caucasian is no nearer the representative of a single type and in many cases no nearer to the actual white man than many so-called Negroes,” read the opening paragraph of the manuscript.

Unfortunately, Tobias and Moorland pulled out their financial backing and the book was never published. 

Woodson’s “The Case of the Negro” was written 13 years before the “Mis-Education of the Negro,” which today is a classic.

Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, chair of the history department at Harvard, said Woodson “found his voice in 1933 with ‘The Mis-Education of the Negro.’ That is a more sophisticated critique. … It was a critique of white historians who were racist and African Americans who did not think African American history was important in the first place.”

Woodson’s opus “The Mis-Education of the Negro,” originally published in 1933, argued that Blacks of his day were being culturally indoctrinated, rather than taught, in American schools. And it is conditioning, he claimed, that causes Blacks to become dependent rather than to fight for economic and social power.

Here are 10 things you should know about “The Mis-Education of the Negro.”

Not Much Has Changed

The book highlights not only what was happening at the time in the Black community, but also how not much has changed today.

In one chapter entitled “The Failure to Make a Living” Woodson wrote that Black people who attend college still face sometimes insurmountable challenges to make a living, and especially owning and operating a business. Woodson noted that Black Americans lack of support systems that the white community have.

Liked And Loathed

There were many who praised “The Mis-Education of the Negro” as an honest look at problems that plague African Americans’ social advancement.

Yet one review said:  “The result was a caustic and uncompromising litany that seemed to go on forever. Negro education, Woodson charged, clung to a defunct ‘machine method’ based on the misguided assumption that ‘education is merely a process of imparting information.’ it failed to inspire Black students and ‘did not bring their minds into harmony with life as they must face it.’ theories of Negro inferiority were ‘drilled’ into Black pupils in virtually every classroom they entered. And the more education Blacks received, the more ‘estranged from the masses’ they became,” the “Progressive Education in Black and White: Rereading Carter G. Woodson’s Miseducation of the Negro” reported. 

Cultural Inspiration

The book inspired the title and songs of Lauryn Hill’s 1998 best-selling album “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.”

Found In Film

It also inspired more than a few film titles.

“There are few purer distillations of how miseducation works than conversion therapy. Alongside its sunny depictions of gay and lesbian comings-of-age, 2018 featured two feature films depicting the practice: ‘Boy Erased’ and ‘The Miseducation of Cameron Post.’ The latter film takes place in the ’90s in a Christian boarding school called God’s Promise, which is dedicated to ridding adolescents of their same-sex attractions. But the movie hints that the process it describes isn’t limited to making students detest their sexuality alone. It has in mind a much larger history of miseducation in America — a savaging of cultures and identities that began before the nation’s founding, and continues today,” The Atlantic reported.

Relevant and Relatable Quotes

There are many quotes in the book that still ring true today, including: 

“If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.”

A Call For Self Empowerment

Woodson used to book to encourage Blacks to become independent of white America, especially economically. He wrote: “History shows that it does not matter who is in power…those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they did in the beginning.”

He also wrote: “If the African-American in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.”

Blacks Helped Make America Great

“As Woodson discusses throughout the book, every ethnic group brought their own strengths and characteristics, which helped the United States propel itself to its superpower status. Woodson cites that African-Americans will never be able to build upon their strengths if they aren’t made aware of it through education and will be always a step behind as they react to confirm to the styles and strengths of their white counterparts,” MadameNoire reported.

Must-Read

Woodon’s 85-year-old book “it as a mainstay in some African American studies classes, thought of mostly as a dry paean to the importance of teaching Black history,” The Atlantic reported.

How America Teaches

Woodson wrote about the impact of how someone is taught: “If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood–to hate himself.” 

Slavery

Woodson wrote of the slave trade: “The bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.”