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 educated Black people are disconnected from the Black masses, which indicates that their education has failed them. For example, they seldom attend Black churches, which are crucial institutions that help support entire communities, including schools and businesses. Yet “highly educated” people also have skills and knowledge that the community needs to develop, and they could put it to use in church if they wanted. Instead, they frequently join churches that are either predominantly white or primarily focused on religious rituals, without strong ties to the community. Woodson considers this an act of “slave psychology,” or preferring to be led by the oppressor. It's true that many Black churches are corrupt, but accepting segregation is worse than accepting corruption.
Yet again, Woodson shows how succeeding in school requires Black students to accept their own inferiority. Thus, education actually fractures the Black community rather than helping it advance: it creates leaders who disdain themselves and the community, rather than believing in them. Woodson pays special attention to churches because, in his day and age, they’re the only institutions that the Black community truly controls. Even if they’re largely ineffective and corrupt, they still represent Black communities’ potential to become self-sufficient. Therefore, they’re a model for the Black-run schools and universities that Woodson wants to build up. They provide a physical, social, and emotional space for people to connect, which means that they can also provide the basis for Black people to start successful businesses in their own communities.
Themes
In general, Woodson argues, elite Black people have stopped making a meaningful effort to improve the conditions of the masses. In the 1880s, they got educated in the hopes of helping uplift the race as a whole, but by the 1930s, they were mostly interested in getting educated to secure jobs and live selfishly, for themselves. For instance, in Washington, D.C., educated Black people continue to grow wealthier and better off, while the masses remain as “backward” and “undeveloped” as they were 50 years before. The educated don’t make an effort to help the masses—they just abandon them, instead.
Much like the teachers who set up Black schools in the South after the American Civil War, the Black elite has given up on its original social mission and embraced self-interest instead. Woodson suggests that they no longer view themselves as connected or responsible to the community as a whole. But he also clearly thinks that education can remedy this problem by helping future generations of Black elites view themselves as connected to and responsible for the “backward” masses. Meanwhile, the masses’ predicament shows how effective Jim Crow (segregation) laws were at preventing Black people from building power, wealth, and autonomy in U.S. society. Namely, although the Black masses made progress during Reconstruction, this abruptly stopped in the 1880s.
Themes
The church is the most important institution for uplifting the Black community because it’s the only one that Black people control for themselves (unlike banks and schools). But Woodson argues that Black people have simply copied white people’s versions of Christianity, rather than developing their own authentic interpretation of the religion. By creating a new sect every time white people do, Black people have made so many different churches and institutions that they have become redundant and can’t actually coordinate. They’ve also become tangled up in white theologians’ absurd and dangerous debates, which serve to justify atrocities like slavery and segregation. By imitating white people, Black people have corrupted the church and sabotaged their fight against oppression. “‘Highly educated’ Negroes” rightly understand this corruption but wrongly choose to abandon the church—and the community—rather than help reform them.
Woodson argues that, in the church as in business, Black people have lost a sense of social responsibility and chosen imitation over originality. Every time the church divides, its power to build economic and political power in the Black community diminishes. The same thing happens every time religious leaders focus on white theologians’ debates rather than Black people’s lived experiences. “Highly educated” Black people criticize the church’s abandonment of responsibility and ignorance about people’s struggle against oppression. But after making this criticism, they ironically make the same mistakes as the church: they decide that they’re not responsible for the church’s failures or the fate of the community. Through this response, elites also avoid taking responsibility and ignore the struggle against oppression.
Themes
