Subject: Long live the Spirit
of Dr. Carter G. Woodson
The Mis-Education of the Negro was published by Dr. Carter G.
Woodson in 1933. The thesis of Dr. Woodson's book is that the “Negros” of
his day were being culturally indoctrinated in American schools, and not
properly educated. He claimed that this conditioning caused Negroes (and later,
Blacks and African Americans) to become dependent and to seek out inferior
positions within American society. Woodson challenged his readers, instead, to
become autodidacts and to "do for themselves," regardless of what
they were taught:
In 2013, as Mis-Educated Negroes gleefully
celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the March on Washington, and will
mournfully commemorate the 50th of the assassination of John F.
Kennedy — Re-Educated Negroes, those who have restored their African memories,
gleefully commemorated the 70th Anniversary of the publishing of The
Mis-Education of the Negro throughout the entire year.
Here are ten
quotes from Dr. Woodson to help you Re-Educate your mind:
#1.
“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 an 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.”
#2.
“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.”
#3.
“When
you control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his actions. You do
not have to tell him not to stand here or go yonder. He will find his 'proper
place' and will stay in it. You do not need to send him to the back door. He
will go without being told. In fact, if there is no back door, he will cut one
for his special benefit. His education makes it necessary.”
#
4.
“Philosophers
have long conceded, however, that every man has two educators: 'that which is
given to him, and the other that which 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.”
#5.
“No
man knows what he can do until he tries.”
#6.
“The
oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the
crimes of the strong.”
#7.
“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.”
#8.
“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.”
#9.
“It
may be well to repeat here the saying that old men talk of what they have done,
young men of what they are doing, and fools of what they expect to do. The Negro
race has a rather large share of the last mentioned class.”
#10.
“The
bondage of the Negro brought captive from Africa is one of the greatest dramas
in history, and the writer who merely sees in that ordeal something to approve
or condemn fails to understand the evolution of the human race.”
Long
live the Spirit of Dr. Carter G. Woodson
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