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VI. Of the Training of Black Men

Summary

Du Bois continues to emphasize the need for education. He states that education should be used to improve the quality of lives and that it should be available to everyone, not just those that are going to be successful in a higher education setting. He says that other people put the importance of education in developing society, but points out that training individuals to work does not solve all of the social problems. “Training for life teaches living; but what training for the profitable living together of Black men and white?” Du Bois also discusses the hasty establishment of schools, from elementary schools to universities, against the industrial revolution of the South. Du Bois questions the merits of the “industrial school” as it turns people into material resources. 

Du Bois points out that segregation, especially in the South, makes any training between groups of people impossible, yet the cooperation of different groups of people is necessary for progress. He describes how thirty thousand teachers were placed in the South in a single generation. The sweeping response was able to eliminate the large amount of illiteracy in the Black South and establish a groundwork for higher education to function. He says that many of the higher education institutions in the Black South are not all of the same quality. Due to the problems within the new education system, the students at such institutions are less prepared. He does point out the success of Black college graduates, who have become effective teachers and community leaders. He reiterates that higher education is the path to social change and racial cooperation.

Analysis

Du Bois’s continued emphasis on education illustrates his belief that his people must study racism seriously if they are to overcome it. One of the reasons Du Bois wrote The Souls of Black Folk was to challenge the prevailing view among whites that all Black people are the same. Yet, when he describes the three streams of thinking about Black people, he categorizes all Black people in the same stream in order to demonstrate that Black people have no influence on contemporary discourse about themselves and about the racism they endure. White people don’t consider Black people to be authorities on the subject of racism, which is why Du Bois reemphasizes the fact Black people must study racism seriously even if they feel they don’t have the means to fight it. Further, he extols the value education has in healing the emotional wounds of racism and slavery.

Though Black writers and intellectuals would later argue that education can prop up racist ideals just as easily as it can tear them down, Du Bois knows that many Southern white people are also uneducated, and that education is a better indicator than skin color as a determining factor of how smart people are. He asserts this belief to defend against accusations of elitism for his stand against technical training for Black people, whom he believes already had too much of this type of education during slavery. Du Bois argues for classical education for Black people in order to augment their intelligence, not to provide them with training to support the agriculture industry.

Du Bois is tired of people who pigeonhole Black people as workers and only emphasize the importance of technical training, which is Washington’s tactic. Du Bois wants more for his community. The Teacher Training Institutes offer another educational opportunity for Black people who will, in turn, educate others. During slavery it was illegal for a slave to learn to read and write, in large part because whites were afraid if they had these skills, slaves would become even more aware of their plight and revolt. White people during and after slavery were interested in keeping Black people illiterate, so they could not advance. Du Bois modulates his argument for educating Black people to address a wide swath of opinions on the matter when he points out that higher education will bring about much needed social change and cooperation that will benefit all races. He uses a positive tone to make his deduction more palatable to potential critics of his belief.

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