Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Mis-Education of the Negro, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Racism and Education
Mis-Education as Social Control
Failures of Black Leadership
Business and Economic Development
Summary
Analysis
Woodson summarizes his argument so far: the failed American education system has not allowed Black people to develop themselves or learn to think critically. This has led the Black community to political inaction. Therefore, mis-education is a system of social control: it leads the Black community to act against their own interests and instead defend the people who oppress them.
Woodson presents his book’s central argument after surveying different fields of education in the U.S. and establishing that Black people receive inferior schooling to white people in every area. He’s also established that his readers should worry about this mis-education for multiple reasons: first, it prevents individuals from reaching their potential. Second, it limits economic development in Black communities throughout the U.S. And finally, it’s a moral stain on the nation as a whole, because it sustains an social, political, and economic inequality.
Themes
In the past, Black people did courageously fight for their rights. Black soldiers played a crucial part in the Revolutionary War, and Black abolitionists courageously called for equality in the 18th century. But in the early 20th century, Woodson argues, Black people are starting to accept racial segregation and give up on equality. He claims that Black people have lost the sense of courage and unity that once drove them to oppose the Back-to-Africa movement, fight slavery, and build a better future for their community. Instead, in the early 20th century, they try to get ahead by selling one another out. Many educated Black people actually support Jim Crow laws.
Woodson wants Black people to stop focusing entirely on their own individual advancement and start asking how they can advance while also advancing the cause of their race as a whole. He’s particularly speaking to the Black elites who are most likely to be reading his book. Thus, he invokes the history of Black freedom struggles in order to inspire his readers to take up a new fight against Jim Crow. Even though this fight might seem impossible to win, these historical precedents show that Black people have successfully won greater rights and freedoms for themselves—and the nation as a whole—in even direr circumstances in the past.
Themes
Woodson compares Black people who support racial segregation to addicts who take drugs to temporarily relieve their pain, rather than dealing with their underlying problems. When Black people accept segregation, they end up with inferior jobs and get used to it. They get excluded from politics but accept this as inevitable. They get locked in ghetto neighborhoods but decide to stay. In short, mis-education is the primary force maintaining segregation. It leads Black people to go back and forth between demanding equality and accepting segregation, depending on which is more convenient for them personally. For example, Reconstruction leaders demanded civil rights but supported segregated schools.
Woodson succinctly explains why he thinks that fixing education policy is the single most important step that Black people can take to fight racial segregation. Mis-education fractures the Black community by dividing it between two warring factions: the elites and the masses. The elites accept inequality between races so long as they continue to benefit from inequality within the race. And without support from the elites, the masses don’t believe they can do anything to improve their situation collectively—they can only join the elite as individuals. This division prevents Black people from coming together to fix segregation. Therefore, mis-education means maintaining segregation, and fixing mis-education is key to ending Jim Crow. Looking back at the 20th century, it appears that Woodson was right to put education at the center of his analysis of segregation and inequality. Famously, the integration of Southern schools in the 1950s was one of the most important tipping points in the decades-long civil rights movement.
Themes
Woodson writes about a group of freed slaves he met in his childhood. When the white farm-owner invited them to eat breakfast with his family, the freedmen insisted that they couldn’t mix with white people and should eat in the fields instead. This shows that segregation perpetuates itself: because Black people can never leave their segregated community, they convince themselves that they can never overcome segregation. The educated elite takes advantage of this situation, profiting at the expense of the segregated masses. For instance, some rent to poorer Black people at exorbitant rates, while others start churches or overcharge clients for poor service. Black politicians know they will receive the Black vote, so they focus on selling those votes to the highest bidder.
This group of former slaves refused to dine with the farmer as equals because they had internalized American slavery’s racial hierarchy. For Woodson, their behavior is a key example of how the oppressed masses accept and even perpetuate their own subjugation when they don’t receive a real education. Meanwhile, Woodson again points out how the educated elite exploits the masses rather than guiding or leading them. He thinks that the Black community’s future fundamentally depends on which models it chooses: internal division (which leads the minority to exploit the minority) or unification for the sake of shared economic and political advancement.
Themes
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When Woodson is writing during the Great Depression, Black people are losing their jobs in droves—white employers fire them before anyone else, and machines are making their jobs obsolete. This means “highly educated” Black professionals no longer have customers to exploit. To survive, Woodson argues, the Black community needs to band together economically by pooling resources and creating new industries that meet its members’ needs.
Black workers’ job losses during the Great Depression show that, in the white-dominated economy, they are always expendable and undervalued. In other words, taking low-ranking jobs in the conventional economy will not help them advance in the long term, because they will not gain the real benefits of their labor. But Woodson thinks that, if the Black community can build its own institutions and enterprises, it can ensure that the benefits of Black workers’ labor stay and grow within the community.
Themes
“Highly educated” Black people lack faith in Black businesses, because many have failed in the past. However, Woodson argues that these businesses failed because investors did not place confidence in them. In fact, such investor confidence is the cornerstone of the economy, so Black people’s lack of confidence in their own community is the root of their enduring economic problems. The education system further undermines Black people’s confidence in themselves, worsening these economic problems.
Without investor confidence, businesses fail—and businesses with a history of failure don’t attract investors. Since the economy is fundamentally based on this kind of informal, subjective judgment, the racist values that students learn in the school system deeply shape their decisions and have an enduring economic impact.
Themes
Woodson thinks that adult education programs can improve the Black community’s economic situation by teaching people to cooperate, start businesses, and manage money. But long-term solutions to racial segregation must start within the Black community, whose dependence on outside support is precisely what keeps it poor. As Frederick Douglass argued, if Black people want American society to take them seriously, they have to build up industries that make them essential to the American economy as a whole.
Woodson’s vision of Black education goes far beyond schools and universities. Rather, he thinks that Black people of all ages, professions, and ability levels should have access to education programs that can help them develop their skills and contribute to the community’s economic growth. Because he has seen how the Black elite exploits the masses, Woodson has little faith in top-down solutions that depend on its leadership. Instead, he believes that the masses have to rise up on their own through work, innovation, and true education.
Themes
