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 argues that Black people should become professionals not only for the purposes of their own careers, but also for the sake of serving their community. It’s essential to have Black lawyers, because Black people’s rights are always up for debate in the courts. Black lawyers should also develop close ties with the community and learn about the specific challenges that Black people face under racial segregation (like falsified criminal records). Woodson explains that many Black lawyers lose their cases because, despite their sense of justice and obligation to the race, they lack the necessary knowledge of legal precedent and aren’t prepared to deal with the court system’s own prejudice.
Now that Woodson has offered his vision of a reformed school system, both classical and vocational, he presents his vision of a reformed Black professional class, which puts the good of the community above pure self-interest. He starts with the need to train effective Black lawyers, because this is one of the most important steps that the Black community can take to advance its political rights. Specifically, the law has been white supremacy’s most powerful tool against Black Americans, so any meaningful strategy toward integration and equality will require Black lawyers’ expertise.
Themes
Black doctors have generally been more successful than Black lawyers, but many choose medicine in the hopes of becoming rich. Woodson met one doctor who doesn’t even have the equipment to treat his patients—he just briefly looks at them and then takes his fee. Thus, Woodson declares that the Black community needs competent, professional doctors who can address the specific health problems that Black people face in the segregated urban neighborhoods where they live. Beyond clinical practice, doctors also need to push for public health measures and medical research on these topics. They need to reach rural Black populations that still rely on folk medicine and study the particular diseases that Black populations are more likely to suffer.
Doctors might address a more pressing biological need than lawyers, but this doesn’t prevent them from being opportunistic and self-serving. Regardless of their intentions, most Black doctors actually benefit from segregation, which raises the demand for their services by restricting Black patients’ access to non-Black practitioners. To improve and expand medical care, however, it’s essential for Black communities to build stronger institutions and hold doctors to higher standards. Needless to say, then, improving medical education is an essential part of improving medicine.
Themes
Woodson argues that Black people need to push for inclusion in other professions besides law and medicine, and not only in the United States. He points out that Europeans take Black artists more seriously than Americans, as they have finally recognized that Black people have an important message for the world. Woodson hopes that these artists can help articulate and bring about a new vision of the future for Black people around the world.
While contemporary readers might not consider artists as professionals of the same order as doctors and lawyers, Woodson thinks that they’re extremely important. For one, this is because their creative work can tell inspiring stories that give Black people a sense of pride and identity. Secondly, they are also the most outward-facing people in the Black community, so they largely determine how the world perceives Black American life and culture. By developing a vibrant creative movement, Woodson thinks, Black artists can do as much as lawyers, doctors, or even teachers to help people (whether Black or not) accept the equality of the races.
Themes
