Church in the Wild

Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.

-George Washington Carver

This is such a profound statement because it transcends the time period in which it was stated. Yes, African Americans becoming educated did help our plight tremendously, but this statement is still relevant today. The less educated an individual is, the deeper in slavery they are. I wholeheartedly believe that. The society we live in does not have much leeway for uneducated people to prosper. Long gone are the times when a man could just remain uneducated and make money from farming. People go to college to major in agriculture now. As African Americans our people are often trapped in societal slavery and are never able to make it out of the ghettos and the projects because they are not educated. They stumble through school focused on the wrong things and often never plan to go to college. Others still get pregnant in high school or directly afterward and never make their way toward furthering their education either. 

We got out of literal slavery and we broke down the barriers of segregation and gained our “civil rights”. But now it seems that we are bowing down to another type of slavery. Contrary to popular belief, it is a self imposed slavery. We did not create the system in which so many of our people are trapped in, but we actively participate in it and make the decision not to rise out of it. The system was designed to allow us to fall into it on our own and waddle in it like pigs in the mud.

The problem is that lack of education traps our people in a slavery that is seldom escaped. It is a social slavery that dictates where you live and the kind of people that you know. It is a financial slavery that causes you to live from paycheck to paycheck and dictate what you have and how much of it you have. It is a governmental slavery that binds you to the will of the government and makes you dependent on the government for food and necessities. It is a slavery that binds generations. It teaches them not to value the family and to have children and depend on child support. Children have grown up in this slavery and do not know anything different. They don’t aspire for more because they think that this is all that they need. Don’t get me wrong I am not generalizing. Some people are born into bad situations and make it out. They understand that there is more to life. But this system is trying to trap us. Pay day loans, title loans, and the like are all means of keeping the poor living from paycheck to paycheck. By not taking the opportunity to be educated we throw away our only chance at freedom. It is scoffing at the only key to open the door to true freedom. 

Carver stated that the door that lead to freedom was a golden one. While I’m sure that he was referring to how precious freedom is, I also want to look at it from another standpoint. A golden door would be HEAVY! It would be so heavy that it would be very difficult to open. Notice I said difficult. A locked door is impossible to open. For us to be truly free we must be willing to at least get the key (education) to the door we wish to open. Actually opening the door will be difficult but it will be possible. Just because you have an education doesn’t mean you will not struggle. You may have to pay back some student loans. You may have a hard time finding a job. But at the end of the day you at least have the key!