In his book Black Leadership, Marable describes what we will refer to as the Tuskegee phenomenon, in which he asserts Booker T. Washingtons favoring of just this type of quick fix vocational education to be erroneous. Over the next few pages, I will examine Marables arguments and I will attempt to extend their application into society as we know it today. Marable describes the Tuskegee approach to black development as political racial accommodation. He details a vocational education completely devoid of encouraging critical thinking. He writes, it (Tuskegee) took the social and cultural transformation of the black Southern labor force to be a major responsibility of black educational institutions. He continues describing Washingtons curriculum which aside from agricultural and industrial instruction, placed emphasis upon promoting literacy and personal hygiene. The education received by a male student at the Tuskegee Institute would consist of courses in carpentry, printing, agricultural economics, and other technical training whereas for females it would consist of courses in laundry, sewing, and kitchen duties. Marable describes Washingtons directive that his students respect authority without debate. Although Washingtons plan did seem to promote black capital formation at the time of his Tuskegee, it would come back to haunt African Americans for years to come. Marable states, Washingtons public position of accommodation to racial inequality prepared the ideological ground for a series of repressing (Jim Crow) laws. Through Washingtons policies of tolerating racialism, further segregation was enabled between blacks and whites. In the end, Washingtons dissemination of miseducation at the Tuskegee Institute would limit blacks from achieving their own empowerment.Now I will examine certain parallels between the vocational training of the Tuskegee Institute of Washingtons day as described by Marable and compare them with a vocational e...
