The Mis-Education of the Negro, originally published 80 years ago by Dr. Carter Godwin Woodson, taught us that African Americans of his time were being culturally programmed and brainwashed, rather than taught, in American schools. I believe that is also accurate today, and with the exodus of so many African-American students transferring to predominantly white districts, the indoctrination will continue.
Dr. Robin Di Angelo asks what it means to be white in a society that proclaims race meaningless yet is deeply divided by race. In her book What Does It Mean To Be White? Di Angelo argues that a number of factors make this question difficult for whites. Many factors contribute to what she terms white racial illiteracy. She describes how race shapes the lives of white people, explains what makes racism so hard for whites to see, identifies common white racial patterns, and speaks back to popular white narratives that deny racism.
Many white people will not discuss the effects and implications of poverty, or examine causes, such as the lack of adequate schoolrooms and textbooks and insufficient job opportunities.
It is usually a black or a brown face they attach to a demographic faction that lives below the radar of wealthy and middle-class Americans. They usually do not reflect on how income, family background, culture attitudes, aspirations and appearance make someone a member of a particular group.
Pat Buchanan wrote, “Though blacks are outnumbered 5-to-1 in the population by whites, they commit eight times as many crimes against whites as the reverse. By those 2007 numbers, a black male was 40 times as likely to assault a white person as the reverse.”
If interracial crime is the ugliest manifestation of racism, what does this tell us about where racism really resides in America? People such as Pat Buchannan and other bigoted journalists launch this hatred and misinformation to keep us divided.
The mis-education of white America must be addressed before we will be a complete united nation. We must speak to a system divided by race and class. Usually class is harder to spot than racial or ethnic differences, yet in many ways it’s the most important predictor of what kind of financial and educational opportunities someone will have in life.
So as we try to overcome the mis-education of the Negro, let’s also develop a method of correcting the mis-education of whites as well.
Please watch the Bernie Hayes TV program Saturday night at 10 p.m., Friday morning at 9 a.m. and Sunday evenings at 5:30 p.m. on KNLC-TV Ch. 24. I can be reached by fax at (314) 837-3369 or e-mail at: berhay@swbell.net.
