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Chapter 4
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
Scholars commonly complain that the U.S. education system hasn’t taught Black students to make a living. Universities don’t teach them better farming techniques, business skills, or knowledge that builds on the abilities they already have. For instance, Woodson suggests that a young washerwoman could learn about science and business, then open a laundromat—but this isn’t possible under the current system. Instead, colleges teach irrelevant skills that do not contribute to student development.
Woodson illustrates what he means when he says that schools and universities ought to focus on developing students’ specific skills, interests, and talents, rather than teaching them a one-size-fits-all curriculum. By learning information relevant to her existing skills, the washerwoman could advance in the industry she already knows. But instead, colleges teach all students a standard curriculum and leave it up to them to connect this curriculum to their own lives.
Themes
Liberal arts education does not prevent white students from getting jobs, since they often have extensive social and family networks. But it does harm Black students’ job prospects. Woodson points out that while he—a liberal arts student—has struggled to make a living, one of his friends studied wool and became a wealthy businessman.
This difference in family and social networks is one key reason that white and Black people have different educational needs. Namely, because of these networks, white college students generally don’t need to learn practical skills in college to get a job afterward, while Black students do.
Themes
Woodson compares a school drop-out who runs a successful fruit stand to an over-educated man who becomes depressed because he can’t find a job. This educated man refuses to invest in Black businesses, because he believes they always fail. Actually, this is backwards: Black businesses fail because they lack investor capital. Rather than providing this capital, many “highly educated” Black people complain that white people control all the resources and propose starting a socialist revolution. Woodson considers this an unrealistic solution. He points out that, while these elites are complaining, uneducated Black people are successfully creating small businesses. Woodson remembers one “highly educated” Black woman who refused to work because she thought her salary was too low. But he points out that many white students happily work as unpaid apprentices for years.
Woodson is primarily concerned with how Black people can advance economically, and in this context, traditional education again proves counterproductive. This is because it’s too disconnected from the world: it encourages students to think about themselves and the world in abstract terms, rather than addressing the concrete situations and challenges that they face. For Black people in the early 20th century, these challenges prominently include racism, segregation, and a lack of resources. “Highly educated” Black people have the power to help the community as a whole overcome these challenges, since they have access to more resources and can help build a thriving economy within the Black community. But instead, they worry about the way these challenges specifically afflict them, and they abandon the rest of their community.
Themes
The root of the problem is that business schools teach Black students poorly. They teach students to imagine managing a business, but not to work their way up from the lower levels of a company. In Woodson’s experience, Black graduates mistakenly choose stable but low-paying salaried jobs in large corporations, instead of taking commission-based positions that depend on their own effort or pursuing entrepreneurial opportunities to grow their own businesses. Because business schools don’t teach practical skills, these self-starter jobs seem too overwhelming. When educated Black people do start businesses, many of them make basic mistakes or sell quickly to white corporations. According to Woodson, others lavishly overspend their money, which alienates their customers and community.
While “highly educated” white people get to join a wealthy intellectual, business, and political elite, “highly educated” Black people don’t. They learn to think of themselves as though they should belong to this elite, but instead, they end up in the same position as their uneducated counterparts. Ironically, they still have more skills and resources than these counterparts, but they are less willing to use them. Woodson thinks that this is because their business education teaches them to compare themselves to the white elite and, as a result, seek jobs in white corporations and organizations. In short, they chase security rather than growth because they evaluate their success in relation to white people rather than the Black community.
Themes
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