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 need selfless, competent, morally upstanding political leaders who truly understand the government. These leaders should start by serving and organizing their local communities, which are only politically significant because corrupt political bosses manipulate them for votes. Instead of being satisfied with a few token positions, Black people must seek to wield meaningful power in the country as a whole, like any other group of citizens. This requires them to economically develop their communities and begin contributing to the nation as a whole. Black leaders should take political offices to serve their country, not to profit from it. Moreover, they should try to serve the common good of the whole nation, rather than focusing solely on policies that affect Black people.
Woodson reapproaches politics through the key principle he’s developed in the second half of his book: service is more important than top-down leadership. Therefore, like economic strength, political power must be built from the bottom up. This is the only way to make politicians accountable to the community, and such accountability is the only way to ensure that politicians actually govern in the community’s best interests. Thus, fixing Black politics requires a combination of structural and personal reforms. But both indirectly depend on education. The relevant structural change is creating mechanisms for accountability by organizing the community, and this organization requires overcoming the division between the masses and elites. Meanwhile, creating better leaders requires teaching future generations to value their community above themselves and shaping the personal character and talents of future leaders. Woodson thinks this also requires transforming the school system.
Themes
Woodson specifically rejects communist ideas about social change. Instead, he defends capitalism, as he thinks that individuals are only motivated to work because they can keep the product of their own labor. Even if there is a revolution, Woodson argues, it’s better for Black people to be independent and self-reliant once it’s over. In fact, Woodson firmly believes that Black people can compete with white people on equal footing in a capitalist economy. Again, he thinks that Black people must create a self-sufficient economy for themselves in order to build political power, rather than the other way around. He argues that political solutions like revolution amount to waiting around for someone else to solve Black people’s problems. Moreover, he believes that communists are selfishly manipulating Black people, just like corrupt politicians.
With the Great Depression and the formation of the Soviet Union, capitalism’s value and viability as an economic system were seriously coming into question in Woodson’s time. Therefore, it’s significant that he squarely places himself on the side of capitalism. In other words, he opposes redistributing resources, and instead he thinks that people and communities (including oppressed groups like Black Americans) should build up their own strength through enterprise and hard work. After all, his social philosophy is very close to the traditional American capitalist worldview: he views individual originality and effort as the basis of economic development, and economic development as the basis for political power. In a nutshell, he thinks that individual creativity and hard work are the fundamental forces behind society, and he views education as a means to hone those forces.
Themes
