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
Black churches continue bickering, which divides the community. For instance, one rural town has no church because every family belongs to a different denomination. Rather than teaching unity and cooperation, sectarian religious schools focus on their own survival and power, so they recycle “worn-out” white theological teachings. For instance, Woodson recalls that Black preachers educated in these schools gave sermons praising Europeans figures like Napoleon, Cicero, and Demosthenes, rather than speaking to their congregation’s needs and experiences. These preachers learn to recite sermons without understanding their meaning but learn nothing about the lives or traditions of the people they serve. Popular preachers even ruin their style and reputation when they go to theology school.
In the next three chapters, Woodson looks at the way specific parts of the U.S. school system have failed: namely, the religious, professional, and political education (or lack thereof) that it provides. Here, he explicitly ties poor religious education to the Black church’s failure to lead the Black community. Black preachers learn at white-dominated theology schools that teach a European Christian tradition. Therefore, they end up losing their connection to their parishioners and viewing religion as a primarily spiritual, philosophical, individual practice, rather than as a communal force for social good. Clearly, Woodson thinks that Black churches should work together to establish Black-run theology schools that also teach preachers how to use the church to organize their communities.
Themes
With the rural masses divided between sects and the “talented tenth” attending “refined” services, the Black community gets divided. The masses learn from preachers who understand the people but who haven’t developed their minds through education. Meanwhile, tricksters and con artists take advantage of the church’s power to exploit people. This makes honest preachers’ jobs even more difficult. Woodson remembers how one compulsive gambler briefly started preaching in order to pay his debts.
In the church as in business, the masses need the educated Black elite, but the elite has learned to disdain and distrust the masses. Meanwhile, con artists are attracted to the church because they recognize that it’s an important seat of power. In a way, it’s the closest thing that Black communities at this time had to an independent political body. (But ironically, actual church leaders didn’t seem to fully recognize this.)
Themes
Woodson argues that Black preachers focus too much on scaring people with stories about “mediaeval hell-fire,” and not enough on helping them. He thinks Black worshippers borrowed their emotional, exaggerated style from white Protestants, who have similar practices, like speaking in tongues during church. Woodson also thinks that Black people derived a misguided moral vision from the church by imitating people. The early white religious leaders who came to the U.S. from Europe were often drunks, gamblers, and polygamists. In his time, Woodson remembers prominent, religious white men who had two families or bragged about participating in lynching. He concludes that white Southerners formed a deficient concept of morality—and then Black congregations copied it.
Woodson continues to mix practical advice about how Black leaders should serve their communities with an analysis of the broader systemic and historical contexts that explain how Black leaders fell into their errors. He analyzes white Christian morality in the same way he analyzes the school curriculum: he shows that people adopt distorted ideas and principles in order to justify their position in the world and advance their own interests. But Black people haven’t been able to do this. Again, Woodson sees imitation as the culprit, and he suggests that Black people have to develop their own original approach to religion, theology, and preaching in order for the church to actually serve them. He’s not suggesting that they should develop blindly self-serving moral doctrines. Rather, he thinks their approach to religion and morality should be based on their fundamental social goals: freedom, justice, and equality.
Themes
