The Miseducation of the Negro
My Mission: Stultitia Delenda Est - Stupidity Must be Destroyed!
In his book, ‘ The Miseducation of the Negro,’ Carter G. Woodson very precisely described the biggest impediment to progress in the African community, both on the Continent and in the Diaspora.
I recommend that this book be made compulsory in all African tertiary institutions. No African should consider themself educated until they read Mr. Woodson’s book; it is that important.
Until we understand where we failed, our search for solutions will remain elusive.
Here are some quotations:
If you can control a man's thinking, you do not have to worry about his actions. When you determine what a man shall think, you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think he is just an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.
If you teach the Negro that he has accomplished as much good as any other race he will aspire to equality and justice without regard to race. Such an effort would upset the program of the oppressor in Africa and America. Play up before the Negro, then, his crimes and shortcomings. Let him learn to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin, and the Teuton. Lead the Negro to detest the man of African blood--to hate himself.
The race needs workers, not leaders.
For me, education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it, and make it better.
History shows that it does not matter who is in power or what revolutionary forces take over the government; those who have not learned to do for themselves and have to depend solely on others never obtain any more rights or privileges in the end than they had in the beginning.
If a race has no history, if it has no worthwhile tradition, it becomes a negligible factor in the thought of the world, and it stands in danger of being exterminated.
The mere imparting of information is not education. Above all things, the effort must result in making a man think and do for himself.
Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is given to him, and the other that he gives himself. Of the two kinds, the latter is by far the more desirable. Indeed, all that is most worthy in man he must work out and conquer for himself. It is that which constitutes our real and best nourishment. What we are merely taught seldom nourishes the mind like that which we teach ourselves. Those who have no record of what their forebears have accomplished lose the inspiration which comes from the teaching of biography and history.
As another has well said, to handicap a student by teaching him that his black face is a curse and that his struggle to change his condition is hopeless is the worst sort of lynching.
No man knows what he can do until he tries.
If the Negro in the ghetto must eternally be fed by the hand that pushes him into the ghetto, he will never become strong enough to get out of the ghetto.
The same educational process which inspires and stimulates the oppressor with the thought that he is everything and has accomplished everything worth while, depresses and crushes at the same time the spark of genius in the Negro by making him feel that his race does not amount to much and never will measure up to the standards of other peoples.
Truth must be dug up from the past and presented to the circle of scholastics in scientific form, and then through stories and dramatizations that will permeate our educational system.
The thought of' the inferiority of the Negro is drilled into him in almost every class he enters and in almost every book he studies.
In fact, the confidence of the people is worth more than money.
The large majority of the Negroes who have put on the finishing touches of our best colleges are all but worthless in the development of their people.
The Miseducation of the Negro is on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com › Mis-Education-Negro-Carter-Godwin-Woodson › dp › 1680920685
©️ Fẹ̀mi Akọ̀mọ̀làfẹ̀(Farmer, Writer, Published Author, Essayist, Polemicist, Satirist, and Social Commentator.)
My Mission: Stultitia Delenda Est - Stupidity Must be Destroyed!
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Excellent summary and perennially relevant, Femi. Thank you