What Is The Role Of Education In African American Society

Education can be used to empower or disenfranchise anyone. With knowledge, a person has the power to become informed about their surroundings and petition for changes, but without it people lose that ability. Education can be structured to give the illusion of helping, but can leave out important aspects that would truly help the person. This type of structured education stops people from helping themselves out of bad situations. African Americans were often faced with this discrimination. African Americans primarily funded their own schools with little to no help from any form of government; local, state, or federal. The funding that was meant to go towards African American schools was often stolen by the people in charge. Most of the funding was provided by adult African Americans from the surrounding area. This caused a discrepancy in the quality of the education provided to the two groups. The white children were gaining the education to advance in society and be employed in high paying jobs. African American children did not have the same level of education, therefore they would be stuck in lower positions and would not be able to rise in society.
Education is required to obtain jobs that hold a greater influence on society. The jobs held by African Americans were often menial labor and trade crafts. Positions of political power would go to white Americans and very few African Americans would be able to reach into the white dominated sectors. There was a period of roughly eighty years between the 1880s and the 1960s that an African American was not elected or appointed to the