The reading that I found most interesting this week was the Shaw piece on David and Washington McDonogh. This piece described what life was like in higher education for people of color in the late 1830’s and early 1840’s. Is piece was the first instance that I had ever heard of African Americans going to college in this time period. Just looking at the cover of the problem it appears that there is no problem. It is not until you dive deeper that you see the real problems with educating African Americans in this time period. At the root of this problem is the American Colonization Society (ACS). The ACS wanted to educate the African Americans in our country in order to send them back to Africa to educate their own people. They felt that the people of Africa were dumb, uncivilized , and savage. Feeling this way the only logically thing to do was to educate them so that one day they could maybe live like the “right” way, like the white man.
The McDonogh brothers took advantage of their situation. Washington was sent back to Liberia, but David became a respected medical professional. David refused to leave the United States and was able to attend classes at a medical school. David made a statement that black men are able to successfully accomplish the same things academically as whites. I found his courage to be inspiring. Even though David was not able to obtain a degree from medical school, he was able to become a respected member of the medical community in New York City.
This case study teaches us the early forms of race in institutions of higher education, and also the institutional racism that people faced in American society. Even though the problems faced back then are not as bad today, there are still problems with race in higher education. Much of the problems that we face today with racism stem from the same roots that the problems the McDonogh brothers faced. In order to understand and help solve the problems that we face today with race we must first understand where the problem came from.
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