Booker T Washington Struggle For An Education Analysis

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Unlike Du Bois, Booker T. Washington defines a Black education is one which teaches vocational skills. Washington’s definition of Blackness is different from Du Bois’s drastically as he was a direct descendant of slaves. His Southern perspective is seen clearly as he places the importance of labor before education. In “The Struggle for an Education”, Washington boasts of his entry into Hampton as “the sweeping of that room was [his] college examination, and never did any youth pass an examination for entrance into Harvard or Yale that gave him more genuine satisfaction” (581). Washington discredits a formal education, and demands a vocational education. Washington stresses the labor which he had to do in order to gain entrance into Hampton

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