The Seat of the Trouble: 21 Messages on the Great Mis-Education by Carter G. Woodson
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about the education of Black people.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about who facilitates the education of Black people.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about what it means to think critically.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about those of us still drinking the coolaid.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about the critical moment, the moment when emancipation come, the moment when we trusted our education to white conductorship.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about leaders who ain’t leading, leaders who ain’t serving, leaders who just maintaining.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about this whole thing thing we call education, we call justice, we call movement, we call liberation, we call leadership, we call service, we call advocating, we call organizing, we call support, we call uplift, we call community.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say about spending one’s whole life trying to be like them only to have your pain magnified, your suffering magnified, your confusion magnified.
Carter G Woodson had a lot to say….
Post Emancipation Education
1) “The idea of educating the Negroes after the Civil War was largely a prompting of philanthropy. Their white neighbors failed to assume this responsibility. These Black people had been liberated as a result of a sectional conflict out of which their former owners had emerged victims…From functionaries of the United States Government itself and from those who participated in the conquest of the secessionists early came the plan of teaching these freedmen the simple duties of life as worked out by the Freedmen’s Bureau and philanthropic agencies.” (9-10)
2) “The education of the Negroes, then, the most important thing in the uplift of the Negroes, is almost entirely in the hands of those who have enslaved them and now segregate them. With “mis-educated Negroes” in control themselves, however, it is doubtful that the system would be very much different from what it is or that it would rapidly undergo change. The Negroes thus placed in charge would be the products of the same system and would show no more conception of the task at hand than do the whites who have educated them and shaped their minds as they would have them function. Negro educators of today may have more sympathy and interest in the race than the whites now exploiting Negro institutions as educators, but the former have no more vision than their competitors. Taught from books of the same bias, trained by Caucasians of the same prejudices or by Negroes of enslaved minds, one generation of Negro teachers after another have served for no higher purpose than to do what they are told to do. In other words, a Negro teacher instructing Negro children is in many respects a white teacher thus engaged, for the program in each case is about the same.” (22-23)
3) “This is slightly dangerous ground here, however, for the Negro’s mind has been all but perfectly enslaved in that he has been trained to think what is desired of him. The “highly educated” Negroes do not like to hear anything uttered against this procedure because they make their living this way, and they feel that they must defend the system. Few mis-educated Negroes ever act otherwise; and if they so express themselves, they are easily crushed by the large majority to the contrary so that the procession may move on without interruption. (24)
4) “Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin with life as they find it and make it better, but the instruction so far given Negroes in colleges and universities has worked to the contrary. In most cases such graduates have merely increased the number of malcontents who offer no program for changing the undesirable conditions about which they complain. One should rely upon protest only when it is supported by a constructive program.” (29)
5) “Cooperation implies equality of the participants in the particular task at hand. On the contrary, however, the usual way now is for the whites to work out their plans behind closed doors, have them approved buy a few Negroes serving nominally on a board, and then employ a white or mixed staff to carry out their program. This is not interracial cooperation. It is merely the ancient idea of calling upon the “inferior” to carry out the orders of the “superior.” (29)
6) “In like manner, the teaching of history in the Negro area has had its political significance. Starting out after the Civil War, the opponents of freedom and social justice decided to work out a program which would enslave the Negroes’ mind inasmuch as the freedom of body had to be conceded. It was well understood that if by the teaching of history the white man could be further assured of his superiority and the Negro could be made to feel that he had always been a failure and that the subjection of his will to some other race is necessary the freedman, then, would still be a slave. If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. 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 that he is justly outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” (84)
7) “History shows, then, that as a result of the these unusual forces in the education of the Negro he easily learns to follow the line of least resistance rather than battle against the odds for what real history has shown to be the right course…No Negro thus submerged in the ghetto, then, will have a clear conception of the present status of the race or sufficient foresight to plan for the future; and he drifts so far toward compromise that he loses his moral courage. The education of the Negro, then, becomes a perfect device for control from without. Those who purposely promote it have every reason to rejoice, and Negroes themselves exultingly champion the cause of the oppressor. (96).
Bafyoti Energy
8) “It is unfortunate, too, that such a large number of Negroes do not know any better than to stake their whole fortune on politics. History does not show that any race, especially a minority group, has ever solved an important problem by relying altogether on one thing, certainly not by parking its political strength on one side of the fence because of empty promises. There are Negroes who know better, but such thinkers are kept in the background by the traducers of the race to prevent the enlightenment of the masses. The misleading politicians are the only persons through whom the traducers act with respect of the Negro, and there are always a sufficient number of mentally undeveloped voters who will supply them a large following. (94)
9) “Today when such things come up you find Negroes appearing upon the scene to see how much pay they can obtain to assist in the proposed undoing of the race.” (98)
10)“Denied participation in the higher things of life, the “educated” Negro himself joins, too, with ill-designing persons to handicap his people by systematized exploitation. Feeling that the case of the Negro is hopeless, the “educated” Negro decides upon the course of personally profiting by whatever he can do in using these people as a means to an end. He grins in their faces while “extracting money” from them, but his heart shows no fond attachment to their despised cause. With a little larger income than they receive he can make himself somewhat comfortable in the ghetto; and he forgets those who have no way of escape.” (105)
11) “We have appealed to the talented tenth for a remedy, but they have nothing to offer. Their minds have never functioned in this all important sphere. The “educated” Negro shows no evidence of vision. He should see a new picture. The Negroes are facing the alternative of rising in the sphere of production to supply their proportion of the manufacturers and merchants or of going down to the graves of paupers. The Negro must now do for himself or die out as the world undergoes readjustment. (107).
12) “This much-ado-about-nothing renders impossible cooperation, the most essential thing in the development of a people. The ambitious of this class do more to keep the race in a state of turmoil than to prevent it from serious community effort than all the other elements combined. The one has a job that the other wants; or the one is a leader of a successful faction, and the other is struggling to supplant him. Everything in the community, then, must yield ground to this puerile contest.” (113)
13) “In spite of meager rewards, however, the idea of leadership looms high in the Negro mind. It always develops thus among oppressed people. The oppressor must have some dealing with the despised group, and rather than have contact with individuals he approaches the masses through his own spokesman. The term itself connotes a backward condition. In its strides upward a race shuffles off its leaders because they originate outside of the group. They constitute a load that sinks the oppressed in the mire of trials and tribulations.” (115)
Toward a Different Road
14) “The New Negro in politics, moreover, must not be a politician. He must be a man. He must try to give the world something rather than extract something from it. The world, as he should see it, does not owe him anything, certainly not a political office; and he should not try solely to secure one, and thus waste valuable years which might be devoted to the development of something of an enduring value.” (185)
15) “If the Negro could abandon the idea of leadership and instead stimulate a larger number of the race to take up definite tasks and sacrifice their time and energy in doing these things efficiently the race might accomplish something. The race needs workers, not leaders. Such workers will solve the problems which race leaders talk about and raise money to enable them to talk more and more about. When you hear a man talking, then, always inquire as to what he is doing or what he has done for humanity. Oratory and resolutions do not avail much. If they did, the Negro would be in a paradise on earth. (118)
16) “If we can finally succeed in translating the idea of leadership into that of service, we may soon find it possible to lift the Negro to a higher level. Under leadership we have come into the ghetto; by service within the ranks we may work out way out of it. Under leadership we have been constrained to do the biddings of others; by service we may work out a program in the light of our own circumstances. Under leadership we have become poverty stricken; by service we may teach the masses how to earn a living honestly. Under leadership we have been made to despise our own possibilities and to develop into parasites; by service we may prove sufficient unto the task of self-development and contribute our part to modern culture.” (119)
17) “Philosophers have long conceded, however, that every man has two educations: “that which is given to him, and the other that which he gives himself. Of the two kinds the latter is by far 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.” (126)
18) “The real servant of the people, then, will give more attention to those to be served than to the use that somebody may want to make of them. He will be more concerned with what he can do to increase the ease, comfort, and happiness of the Negro than with how the Negro may be used to contribute to the ease, comfort, and happiness of others.” (131)
19) “The Negro, whether in Africa or America, must be directed toward a serious examination of the fundamentals of education, religion, literature, and philosophy as they have been expounded to him. He must be sufficiently enlightened to determine for himself whether these forces have come into his life to bless him or to bless his oppressor. (195).
20) “The most inviting field for discovery and invention, then, is the Negro himself, but he does not realize it.” (139)
21) “By forgetting the school room for the time being and relying upon an awakening of the masses through adult education we can do much to give the Negro a new point of view with respect to economic enterprise and group cooperation.” (109)
Source
Woodson, Carter G. The Mis-education of the Negro Eworld Inc. 1933