Higher Education vs. Industrial Education in African-American Society

Debate: Booker T. Washington Verses Dubois

The subject of higher education versus industrial education in the Black society has existed since the two options were open to African-Americans after liberation. Both modes of education act a vital part in African-American corporate identity since they both act as one of many cultural representations.

Corresponding to the late Dr. John Ogbu, a former anthropology professor at the University of California (Berkley), corporate identity refers to “people’s sense of who they are, their ‘we feeling’ or ‘belonging’” (Ogbu 3). He moreover states that corporate identity is shown with “emblems or artistic symbols, which follow their attitudes, ideas, feelings, habits, and literature or dialect” (Ogbu 4). Determining which kind of education acts as a cultural figure of African-American corporate status seems to be the core of the present debate, and this design explores this point in more detail.

Education is an ideological mechanism African-Americans used to enhance their social standing in the United States soon after liberation. During the period of W.E.B. DuBois and Booker T. Washington, the sort of education explored by African- Americans was the focus of intense discussion. Washington was an enthusiastic supporter of industrial/vocational education while DuBois supported both higher and industrial education, but greatly emphasized on the higher education (Ogbu 23). A lot of people in the Black society accepted DuBois’s stand on higher education remained the better proposal because it was thought to uplift the community. They thought that Washington’s approach was inefficient and left the whole race exposed to violation by White Americans.

The importance placed by a few modern Africa...

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... from the south could obtain elementary education and beneficial skills that would help them in their endeavor to provide for themselves. Washington's belief was undoubtedly influenced by his encounters at Hampton as and also by his association with Armstrong, and then later developed into his purpose to help increase Blacks based on an technical educational strategy, which eventually generated opposition from others with diverse backgrounds such as DuBois.

Works cited

Moore, Jacqueline M. Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois, and the Struggle for Racial Uplift. Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., 2003

Ogbu, John. "Collective Identity and the Burden of "Acting White" in Black History, Community, and Education." The Urban Review (March 2004): 1-35.

Wolters, Raymond. DuBois and His Rivals. Columbia, Missouri: University of Missouri Press, 2002.