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
Historically, Black people could not easily learn about U.S. history. In school, they seldom learned about the Constitution and the Founders, as these lessons would have shown them that they are supposed to have civil rights. After the American Civil War, white leaders pushed to keep history out of Black schools, because they knew that Black people can only remain a subordinate class if they continued to believe in their own inferiority. Meanwhile, white scholars rewrote the nation’s history in order to portray slavery as benevolent and the Civil War as unnecessary. Despite influential scholarly work to the contrary, many Northern historians have adopted these misguided views and started teaching them to Black students.
Whereas poor religious education primarily affects Black clergy and poor professional education primarily affects Black professionals, faulty political education affects all Black students. By rewriting history, white scholars and administrators prevent Black students from learning about their civil rights and understanding how to influence governmental policy change. This is a deliberate strategy designed to prevent Black people from understanding their historical subjugation, protesting against the government, or publicly demanding their constitutionally guaranteed civil rights. Thus, this is a very clear example of how public schooling actually becomes a tool of oppression and white supremacist propaganda.
Themes
This distorted education system explains why Black lawyers denounce Reconstruction and Black leaders protest teaching civics in Black schools. While they think political education would disrupt “peaceful [race] relations,” Woodson argues that things are only “peaceful” because white terrorism prevents Black people from talking publicly about politics. For instance, Woodson remembers seeing an education official fire a school principal for talking about voting. Woodson points out that most Black people have given up on voting because they face voter suppression tactics like literacy tests and poll taxes.
Woodson shows that distorted education plays a significant role in suppressing Black political activism. Just like Black elites who work in other areas, elite Black educators actually work against their community’s interests by repeating white supremacist talking points. By putting peace before justice, they also put themselves above their communities. Woodson suggests that the first step toward achieving equality is breaking the silence around politics, which requires better educating the public about it.
Themes
As a result of the “one-sided” political education system, even Black professionals know nothing about the basic functions of American government. This system benefits white people in the short term, but in the long term, it prevents Black people from becoming responsible citizens.
Woodson is fully aware of how poor political education in Black schools helps white people maintain their political power. But he also makes a plea to the U.S.’s interests as a whole when he suggests that creating an effective government for everyone requires racial integration rather than maintaining racial division. Clearly, political education is a key step toward this integration.
Themes
In national politics in the 1930s, Black people are only relevant because they support Republican politicians in the South. But rather than helping Black people win equal rights, these politicians just care about winning access to federal money. The “highly educated” Black elite eagerly joins in this corruption—for instance, they collect votes for candidates who give them little in return. Similarly, in the North, politicians view Black voters and community leaders more as pawns to manipulate than constituents to serve.
In the 1930s, Black Americans don’t have true political representation at the national level. Instead, they are forced to choose between a party that makes them false promises and another that openly plans to subjugate them and further restrict their rights. As in every other sphere of life and the economy that Woodson has mentioned so far, Black elites also abandon the masses in politics because of their mis-education.
Themes
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While the American political system has never taken Black people seriously as constituents, Woodson argues, the Black community continues waiting for the political system to solve its problems. The Black politicians who do win elections are often lack insight and are uninspiring: they focus on a few narrow issues relevant to Black voters, but they don’t participate in major national decisions (unlike during Reconstruction).
When Woodson analyzes how the political system has abandoned the Black community, he lays out the stakes of political education. Since Black people’s leadership is failing, they have to build political power from the ground up. But without educating themselves about U.S. government, politics, and history, they have no chance of doing so.
Themes
