The Mis-Education of the Negro

The crux of Woodson’s argument relies on understanding public education in the United States as it existed in the early 1900s. During this time period, education remained segregated, and most Black people would have gone to school, at least in the South, with White teachers. As Woodson describes, this education system prepares Black people only “to begin the life of an Americanized or Europeanized white man” (20). This is a huge issue to Woodson because Black people, upon leaving the public school, would “go back to [their] own people from whom [they have] been estranged” (20). The disillusionment created by a “Americanized” education for a social life that Black people were not permitted to participate in is a harmful psychological tool set up by a White supremacist system to continue placing Black people in an inferior position.

Woodson argues that a more appropriate action would be to revise the “antiquated process” (15) in US schools, describing this system as not even hitting “the mark […] in the case of the needs of the white man himself” (15). Instead, education to Woodson is a process that should take into account a person’s background and how to “begin with [them] as [they are]” (81), whether Black or White.