[As African American studies faces resistance, a conversation
about the continued relevance of Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book, The
Mis-education of the Negro]
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THE BOOK THAT EXPOSED ANTI-BLACK RACISM IN THE CLASSROOM  
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Ibram X. Kendi
February 14, 2023
The Atlantic
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_ As African American studies faces resistance, a conversation about
the continued relevance of Carter G. Woodson’s 1933 book, The
Mis-education of the Negro _

, Getty; The Atlantic

 

In 1925, teachers at the Negro Manual and Training High School of
Muskogee, Oklahoma, made what they thought was an appropriate choice
of textbook: _The Negro in Our History_
[[link removed]], by the Harvard-trained
Black historian Carter G. Woodson. Woodson had written this "history
of the United States as it has been influenced by the presence of the
Negro" to supply the "need of schools long since desiring such a
work," as he wrote in the book's preface
[[link removed]].
Upon learning of this textbook choice, White segregationists on the
school board sprang immediately into action. They decreed that no book
could be “instilled in the schools that is either klan or
antiklan,” insinuating that Woodson’s Black history textbook was
“antiklan."

The school board banned the book. It confiscated all copies. It
punished the teachers. It forced the resignation of the school’s
principal. “It’s striking how similar that feels and sounds to the
contemporary moment,” the Harvard education historian Jarvis R.
Givens told me.

A century ago, white segregationists were banning anti-racist books
and “Negro studies” as well as punishing and threatening
anti-racist educators all over Jim Crow America.

In response to these incidents, Woodson embarked on a new initiative
to support educators and promote Negro history. In 1926, he founded
Negro History Week, which officially became Black History Month 50
years later. And Woodson’s most important scholarly contribution,
his 1933 book, _The Mis-education of the Negro_
[[link removed]], highlighted the
importance of teaching Black history. The book argued that Black
children learn to despise themselves—just as non-Black people learn
to hate Black people—when Black history is not taught. As Woodson
wrote, “There would be no lynching if it did not start in the
schoolroom.” Combining pedagogical theory, history, and memoir, this
was a book about the dangerously racist state of education, a book for
2023 as much as it was for 1933.

+++++++++++++

The Mis-Education Of The Negro
[[link removed]] By Carter
Godwin Woodson   Buy Book Via: [ Tertulia
[[link removed]] | Amazon
[[link removed]] | Bookshop
[[link removed]] ]

+++++++++++++

_The Mis-education of the Negro_ was recently reissued
[[link removed]] with
an introduction from Givens, who studies the history of American
education and has written extensively on Black educators, including
Carter G. Woodson. Givens helped develop the AP African American
Studies course that was piloted in about 60 schools across the United
States and recently rejected in Florida. We discussed the enduring
relevance and power of this classic book 90 years after its birth.

_This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity._

IBRAM X. KENDI: For the past two years, many politicians and
political operatives have made the case that teaching white students
about African American history, about slavery, about racism, makes
them feel bad or is even a form of miseducation. But these operatives
do not seem to care about the educational experience of Black
children. I’m curious what Carter G. Woodson would say about the
impact on Black children of _not_ teaching that material. What is
Woodson saying in _Mis-education_?

JARVIS R. GIVENS: He argues that the physical violence Black people
experience in the world is inextricably linked to curricular violence.
He would say Black students must be equipped with resources to resist
this violation of their dignity and humanity; they must be given an
opportunity to know themselves and the world on new terms. To deny
Black students the opportunity to critically study Black life and
culture is to deny them the opportunity to think outside of the racial
myths that are deeply embedded in the American curriculum.

KENDI: It seems like this book could have just as easily been
titled _The Mis-education of the American_.

GIVENS: The overrepresentation of European and Euro American history
and culture offers white people this kind of inflated sense of
importance. Woodson would say that this has historically been part and
parcel of the identity development of white students, or any other
group who is taught to look down on and despise Black people as a
means of propping themselves up. There are several parts in the book
when Woodson points to this miseducation of non-Black
people—especially when he writes, “There would be no lynching if
it did not start in the schoolroom.”

KENDI: Many people would oppose educators and books that state that
Black people are “demons,” as former Ferguson officer Darren
Wilson described Michael Brown. But there seems to be less concern
about the harm that comes from what educators and books do not state.
Can you share how Woodson talked about the harm that comes from
absences?

GIVENS: This is a really important question. We absolutely learn
through omissions. We learn through things that are _not_ included
in curricula. It teaches us what’s deemed unworthy of inclusion,
what’s deemed as lacking in “educational value” according to the
state of Florida.

And this is something that I think is very, very important, even when
we think about the way Black history and culture have been included.
You know, for so long, you could read the entire history of slavery
and never know that Black people resisted, that they led rebellions,
that they formed Maroon communities. Students could walk away thinking
that slavery was just this benevolent institution, that Black people
had to work hard but they benefited from being immersed in the West
and the Christian world. They made all these beautiful songs and sang
all these Negro spirituals. This is evidence that they were happy. The
absence of narratives about Black people fighting back presents them
as these apolitical subjects. It strips them of their agency.

KENDI: So, those who are attacking what they call “critical race
theory” characterize these omissions—that end up pacifying
people—as “education.” And they classify anti-racist books
(like, frankly, my own) and African American studies as
“indoctrination.” What do you make of that?

GIVENS: If anything, there is a very clear system of indoctrination
that has always been embedded in the American curriculum. It’s
called white supremacy. By engaging in African American studies, we
are inviting students to help undo that.

It’s also important to emphasize that there are diverse perspectives
in African American studies. There is no one African
American–studies perspective. We can have different kinds of
intellectual projects and schools of thought. And the AP African
American Studies course, from what I know of it, as someone who was
part of the team of scholars and K–12 educators that developed it,
is that we were all bringing the diversity of Black thought and
debates to the table. The course represents a good model of the kind
of plurality of thought that we might consider when we’re talking
about reframing the larger structure of knowledge in American
schools.  

KENDI: You wrote beautifully about the fight of Woodson and the Black
teachers of his generation during Jim Crow in your book _Fugitive
Pedagogy_ [[link removed]]. At that time,
too, white segregationists were banning not only Woodson’s books but
all sorts of anti-racist books and lessons. But Black teachers found
ways to still teach Black students the truth. What are some of the
lessons, particularly for teachers in this moment who want students to
learn about racism and U.S. history and racial equality?

GIVENS: The teachers I wrote about in _Fugitive Pedagogy_ were
deeply aware that the efforts to restrict what could and could not be
taught in the classroom infringed on the dignity of Black students,
and it also infringed on their dignity as Black educators. And there
is a larger lesson here: that the dignity of students is always bound
up with the dignity of teachers. How we treat and handle teachers says
something about who we are as a society.

The de-professionalization of teachers in America is something
that’s been happening for a very long time. The teaching profession
has become so debased not on the part of teachers themselves, but in
terms of the social pressures that they’re having to operate under.
It really exposes a deeply ingrained crisis in the culture of the
society that we live in. Teachers are not viewed as intellectuals.
They’re seen as people who are just supposed to come in and follow a
script and not be thinking beings at all.

+++++++++++++

Fugitive Pedagogy - Carter G. Woodson And The Art Of Black Teaching
[[link removed]] By Jarvis
R. Givens   Buy Book Via: [ Tertulia
[[link removed]] | Amazon
[[link removed]] | Bookshop
[[link removed]] ]

+++++++++++++

KENDI: Certainly. When they follow the unthinking script and demand
that students do too, GOP operatives claim that is “education.”

And that brings me to a few of the striking quotes from _The
Mis-education of the Negro_ that I wanted to get your thoughts on.
The first is relevant to what we were just discussing: “The mere
imparting of information is not education.”

GIVENS: Woodson is saying that the purpose of education cannot just
be simply to dump information into the minds of students. It has to be
about guiding students on a journey to understand themselves in
relationship to the world around them and to understand what they can
do to push for social transformation so that they can live and aspire
to a good life—a more meaningful life.

KENDI: Another quote from Woodson’s book: “The oppressor has
always indoctrinated the weak with this interpretation of the crimes
of the strong.”

GIVENS: Woodson is raising questions about the ideological
underpinnings of the official curriculum. This is connected to where
he points out that “the philosophy and ethics resulting from our
educational system have justified slavery, peonage, segregation, and
lynching.” He’s asking us to consider: What does it mean to base
the education of Black students on an interpretation of human
experience and a set of philosophies and ethics that justified the
plunder of Africa and the enslavement of Black people? It erases and
negates Black perspectives and the human striving of Black people.
Therefore, Woodson says, “the education of any people should begin
with the people themselves.”

KENDI: And finally, the most memorable quote from _Mis-education_:
“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.”

GIVENS: He’s naming how an education not based on liberatory
principles can lead to oppressed people being complicit in their own
domination. He’s naming how Black people can become so thoroughly
miseducated that they become enlisted into the anti-Black protocols
that have structured the world that we live in. This quote, for me, is
very important for our reflections on Memphis and the violent death of
Tyre Nichols.

_When you buy a book using a link on this page, The Atlantic will
receive a commission. Thank you for supporting _The Atlantic.

_IBRAM X. KENDI
[[link removed]] is a contributing
writer at The Atlantic. He is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor in the
Humanities at Boston University and the founding director of the
university’s Center for Antiracist Research._

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* Carter G Woodson
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* Black History
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* Education
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* slavery
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* Racism
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* freedom struggle
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* white supremacy
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