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A thread on my favorite quotes on “The Miseducation of The Negro” by Carter G. Woodson
“Negroes are taught to admire the Hebrew, the Greek, the Latin and the Teuton and to despise the African.”
“Real education means to inspire people to live more abundantly, to learn to begin right life as they find it and make it better, but the instruction so far given Negroes in colleges and universities has worked to the contrary.”
“The business among Negroes, too, continues individualistic in spite of advice to the contrary.”
“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.”
“History does not show that any race, especially a minority group, has ever solved an important problem by relying altogether on one thing, certainly not by parking its political strength on one side of the fence because of empty promises.”
“Even the few Negroes who are elected to office are often similarly uninformed and show a lack of vision.”
“The Negro must do for himself or die out as the world undergoes readjustment.”
“Negro banks, as a rule, have failed because the people, taught that their own pioneers in business cannot function in this sphere, withdrew their deposits. An individual cannot live after you extract the blood from his veins.”
“Here we find that the Negro has failed to recover from his slavish habit of berating his own and worshipping others as perfect beings.”
“By forgetting the schoolroom for the time being and relying upon an awakening of the masses through adult education we can do much to give the Negro a new point of view with respect to economic enterprise and group cooperation.”
“The Negroes, however, will not advance far if they continue to waste their energy abusing those who misdirect and exploit them. The exploiters of the race are not so much at fault as the race itself.”
“If the Negro could abandon the idea of leadership and instead stimulate a larger number of the race to take up definite tasks and sacrifice their time and energy in doing these things efficiently the race might accomplish something.”
“The race needs workers, not leaders.”
“Under leadership we have become poverty stricken; by service we may reach the masses how to earn a living honestly.”
“Negroes, however, sometimes choose their own leaders but unfortunately they are too often the wrong kind. Negroes do not readily follow persons with constructive programs.”
“We must feel equally discouraged when we see a minister driving up to his church on Sunday morning in a Cadillac. He does not come to feed the multitude spiritually. He comes to fleece the flock.”
“The Negro as a rule waits until a thing happens before he tries to avert it.”
“Those who keep the people in ignorance and play upon their emotions must be exiled.”
“Any people who will vote the same way for three generations without thereby obtaining results ought to be ignored and disfranchised.”
“Properly awakened, the Negro can do the so-called impossible in the business world and thus help to govern rather than merely be governed.”
“The oppressor has always indoctrinated the weak with his interpretation of the crimes of the strong.”
