Mis-Education of Negro, Suggested CSU Campus Read
Chicago State University (CSU) students in honor of Black History Month, are being educated on the mis-education of African Americans, by way of Dr. Carter G. Woodson’s “The Mis-Education of the Negro” as the suggested campus book read.
CSU Prof. Amzie Moore spoke to the Chicago Citizen Newspaper about why Dr. Woodson’s book was chosen.
“Dr. Woodson was highly educated and founded “Negro History Week” (in 1926),” explained Moore. “His assessment was that Blacks were taught to hate themselves and to be subservient. We feel that Woodson’s Mis-Education of the Negro is relevant today and feel that education today needs to focus on teaching (especially Black students) to have a sense of self like we see with the Jewish and Asian cultures who have a strong sense of self. We want our students to leave CSU as critical thinkers and also have a strong sense of self.”
Originally published in 1933, by Dr. Woodson, “Mis-Education,” is a collection of essays that centers on the idea that African Americans were not properly educated and should have been more culturally indoctrinated, rather than conditioned towards subservience, a process that causes African Americans to become dependent and to seek out inferior places in the greater society of which they are a part.
Quotes from his book include:
“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.”
Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro “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.”
Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro “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.”
Carter G. Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro For a list of scheduled CSU Black History Month events and activities, please visit the website at www.csu.edu.
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