A Reevaluation of African Education

Abstract

Why is there a proliferation in American cities of able-bodied, apparently mentally healthy men of African descent who engage in begging as a means of a living? How is it that predominantly African American neighborhoods in Philadelphia are served by businesses owned and operated mainly by Asian Americans or European Americans? Why is it that generally speaking Africans tend not to believe in themselves, and that they are confused about who they are, in contrast to their proud, disciplined, self-reliant, and creative ancestors of the Kemetic epoch? Carter G. Woodson (1933) provides a cogent and forceful explanation for these and other questions about the place of the African in the U.S. scheme of things, if not in the world itself, in his The Mis-Education of the Negro. An Afrocentric and thought-provoking exposition of the effects of the Great Enslavement and inappropriate education on the African American psyche, this book must be read by anyone who wants to understand why things are the way they are. By inappropriate education, I mean an education that tends to exclude and demean the cultural and historical experiences of the recipient but valorizes a culture which seeks hegemony within a body politic characterized by ethnic heterogeneity. Woodson (1875-1950), an African American himself, was a Harvard-educated scholar, educator, and writer of distinction. He contends in this book that African Americans are exposed to an educational system that is constructed to benefit the dominant American culture but is harmful to their interests and those of their race.