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 praises the white missionaries and philanthropists who established schools and churches in the South after the American Civil War. But he argues that the generation of white teachers and administrators that followed them has completely failed to provide an adequate education for Black students. Moreover, outside of school, many of them still treat their Black students and colleagues as inferiors. Woodson argues that, in practice, history and segregation make it extremely difficult for white teachers to teach Black students.
Woodson suggests that, immediately after the Civil War, missionaries and philanthropists viewed educating the Black population as an important public service and moral duty. But three generations later, in the 1930s, this sense of purpose appears to have faded away. Educators’ personal bias and willingness to uphold racial segregation shows that they no longer view their jobs as part of a broader social or political mission. In part, Woodson’s work is dedicated to revitalizing this mission-driven view of Black education.
Themes
Woodson doesn’t mean that qualified white teachers shouldn’t be allowed to teach in Black schools, but rather that Black communities should direct the school systems that educate their youth. This is because true education—which inspires people and improves their lives—requires connection and understanding between students and teachers.
Again, Woodson thinks fixing structural problems—in this case, changing who has power over the school system—is far more important than addressing a few educators’ personal biases. It’s not that he thinks personal bias is irrelevant—rather, he thinks that structural problems are the root cause of personal bias. He's also careful not to alienate sympathetic white readers by suggesting that white teachers are inherently incapable of educating Black students. Instead, he’s suggesting that communities should control the school systems that educate their youth.
Themes
Woodson isn’t rejecting interracial cooperation in education—but people who use this term often really mean that white people should lead, and Black people should follow. They see it as dangerous to give leadership positions to Black people, because they might start asking for equality or threaten a college’s access to charitable donations from the white establishment. But Woodson again argues that Black institutions and teachers cannot simply copy white institutions and teachers if they want to help Black people advance as a community.
Woodson favors “interracial cooperation” if this means integration, but not if it means white people controlling Black institutions. While the government controls the school system, the white establishment can always threaten Black people’s control over Black institutions, thereby limiting their ability to effectively educate Black students. This is one of the main reasons that Woodson goes on to advocate for the Black community to come together and form private colleges and universities.
Themes
Woodson recalls a conversation with one wealthy donor, who believes that it’s possible to educate Black people by simply investing money in a new institution and hiring people with the right credentials to teach the right courses. But Woodson knows that this doesn’t work. The founder of the University of Chicago built an influential institution by hiring distinguished thinkers to run all the university’s departments, regardless of whether they had doctorates. But in Woodson’s time, people are so obsessed with getting their doctorates in order to get their job that they begin to view the degree as a replacement for a real education. Scholars with PhDs are often more out-of-touch and less creative than scholars without them.
According to Woodson, this donor’s fundamental error is that he doesn’t understand how education works: he mistakes a credential for an education. He thinks that a one-size-fits-all model can work because he thinks of education as inputting information into students’ brains or transforming them to fit a single mold. Therefore, he thinks that all credentialed teachers are equivalent because they’ve learned the same information and been through the same training process. He also thinks that any of these teachers can provide the same quality education, because they can impart the same information and mold students in the same way that was done to them. In contrast to this model of credential-focused teaching, the University of Chicago was built on Woodson’s model of education as a form of personal development. Namely, its founder focused on hiring original, innovative thinkers whose education developed their innate talents and skills.
Themes
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While Northern universities are busy teaching their own populations, Black people should study with the South’s renowned Black scholars and educators, who are designing schools and universities to meet Black people’s specific educational and social needs. Woodson doesn’t want to discourage people from getting doctorates, but he hopes that these degrees will become a mark of scholarly distinction, and not just a way for people to increase their salaries. One example of a meaningful doctorate is a Black sociology PhD student researching rural Black people’s folk sayings and studying their worldview.
Woodson envisions a semi-independent university system in which Black scholars help Black students develop the specific talents, knowledge, and abilities that they need to advance in their careers and in life. The U.S. school system was largely segregated in the 1930s, so at this time, it arguably made more practical sense to build a separate Black education system than to integrate schools and universities. Therefore, Woodson defends separate schools not because he believes in segregation, but because he cares about improving education for Black Americans in an already-segregated system.
Themes
