Although there are more than a few books on the market today, we reference two today that deal critically with the mis-education of young people, all people really. They are: “The Mis-Education of the Negro” by Carter G. Woodson and “Lies My Teacher Told Me” by James Loewen. 

These books cover such things as the lie that Reconstruction was a failure rather than the fact Reconstruction was defeated by the organized violence of the former Confederates and their sympathizers. They deal with the fact that while it was Black legislators pushing for public education and the Black superintendent, Thomas Cardozo, who developed the first plan to finance public schools, it was white leaders demanding the schools be segregated and have their curricula censored.

The work of the generations of white leaders for the next 100 years then presided over the mis-education of public school students and the societies in which they lived. As a consequence, many of us grew up knowing nothing about Cardozo or about the sacrifices made to create Alcorn, Rust, and the other Black colleges. We were not exposed to the facts about the mathematical, architectural, medical, and other skills having come out of Africa. As a matter of fact, much of the kind of mis-education to which we were exposed required years of re-education to correct – many myths are still with us.

Because of the white supremacist ideology that has long undergird this society, many of the myths are passed from one generation to the next. Culturally then, each new generation learns or inherits old and new myths. The fact that the racial myths are often so subtly passed-off as a part of the culture is one reason why racism goes undetected, or at least unrecognized as racism.

We offer here two examples illustrating this point. They are both quite prominent in this community, so much so the writer has had more than a few “serious” conversations with opposing individuals who are otherwise quite astute and informed.

The first of these is college football. Each season, the likes of Mississippi Valley, Jackson State, and Alcorn are humiliated by the likes of Mississippi State or Southern Miss. It has happened so often many people “automatically” think white colleges are superior to Black ones. Gone, if it was ever considered, is the reality that the white colleges have been funded to such as extent they are able: (a) to “buy” the best and most sought-after athletes – Black colleges then compete for the second tier of players; (b) offer the kinds of salaries that all but the most racially committed coaches join their staffs; (c) hire more assistants than the Black colleges; and (d) they are able to purchase the best equipment and facilities for their players’ training. By the same token these fans of white college football, who are blinded to these examples of racism, often fail to acknowledge the majority of the best players on the white schools’ teams are Black and in yesteryears would have been at JSU, Alcorn, or Valley. The only thing that many people “see” is that white colleges’ football teams beat Black colleges’ teams.

The racial context is further muddled because the major sports media outlets all direct most of their attention to the white colleges, which in turn helps more of that group to get drafted into the pros. The cycle is repeated as more of the best Black players go to the white colleges in order to hopefully get drafted.

On the other hand, a generation ago, the same white colleges would not have given Black athletes a second thought. As a matter of fact, today they are only valued for their winning ways on the field, just as would be a fast horse. Beyond that context, many administrators at white colleges oppose things like affirmative action and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. They are tolerated because of accreditation policies, grants and donations, or some legal requirement. The bottom-line being, it is racism that colors athletics on most white college campuses, especially their football programs.

The second illustrative example is the predicament of majority Black municipalities, but especially Jackson. All that many people “see” in Jackson are a multitude of streets and bridges in need of repair, water and sewage systems that are questionable even with federal assistance, closed businesses and schools, abandoned and deteriorating houses, a declining tax base, declining city services, white and middle-income Black flight, a naggingly high crime rate, the fleeing of state agencies, and the state take-over of municipal properties and services. Overall, it is a sad sight to see.

What an astute observer can note, however, is that this drastic decline began as Jackson’s Black population grew to the point of being able to elect a Black mayor and majority Black city council. The ills that followed can be assigned to two human decisions made collectively, if not jointly, by white people. (1) They decided to move and take their businesses and wealth with them. (This can be seen even more starkly in places like Greenville, Natchez, and Greenwood. Up-north it had happened earlier in Detroit, Newark, Philadelphia, and other places.) As white people left Jackson, they began immediately building up surrounding areas like Flowood, Madison, Gluckstadt, and Brandon through their wealth and that of the businesses they created or attracted. (2) In the same breath, as the Mississippi State Legislature became more and more Republican-dominated, it decided to not only decrease its assistance to the predominately Black state capital, it also decided to rob Jackson of services and sources of revenue such as the airport, the baseball stadium, the water and sewage systems, the bureau of vital statistics, the state crime lab, and the state tax commission, among others. This leaves Jackson officials with a declining population and a declining enterprise to call a city, even worse they have less with which to govern. It helps to create the myth about the inability of Black officials to successfully govern. 

Years from now, conservative historians will talk about the way in which Ole Miss, Mississippi State, and other predominantly white institutions provided “opportunities” for Black student-athletes, with no mention of racial motives and context of those who had the power to make the decisions; nothing about the price paid by the Black colleges. They may even talk about the manner in which Jackson was rescued by the state or about cities being mismanaged as Black people took control of them. One can only hope that there will be enough honest historians and educators around to set the record straight, or better still, enough to have written the correct record in the first place.