Education Reinforces the Race Disparity in Adventures of Huckleberry Fi

â€Å"Education is a dependent, inter-acting unit of the whole culture. Indeed, it lies at the heart of the culture, and necessarily reflects the contending values which there prevail,† writes Doxey A. Wilkerson, the associate professor of education at the Yeshiva University of New York, in the foreword for Carter Woodson’s The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. Education, as posited by Wilkerson, represents a cultural construct, liable to change as people change, rather than a historical absolute, constant over time. The community determines the value, and the accessibility of this institution of knowledge. The communities created in Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Langston Hughes’ Not Without Laughter also establish the importance of education. Huckleberry Finn, the white male adolescent protagonist of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Sandy Rogers, the black male adolescent protagonist of Not Without Laughter, both question the necessity of formal education. However, in the end, Huck, advantaged because he is a white male, successfully abandons, unequivocally, all constraints of society, including education, while Sandy turns to formal education, attempting to use it as an equalizer against racial discrimination. The novels, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Not Without Laughter, reinforce the racial disparity between whites and blacks by creating communities that undermine the value of education, and determine each race’s ability to succeed without formal education. In each of the novels, the communities established by Twain and Hughes, define the characteristics prevalent in their societies. Huck Finn’s river community, for example, encompasses the aristocracy, the poor whites, the pseudo-intellectuals, an... ... and accessibility of this institution of knowledge through their status as prescribers and models for their society. The black race, on the other hand, requires extensive formal education to succeed in a world ruled by the white race. Huck Finn and Sandy Rogers embody the aspirations and beliefs of the race they identify with and compound the racial tensions through their experiences. Works Cited Hughes, Langston. Not Without Laughter. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications, 2007. Print. Pollak, Louis H. "Race, Law & History: the Supreme Court from "Dred Scott" to "Grutter v. Bollinger"" Daedalus 134.1 (2005): 35-41. Print. Twain, Mark. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. New York, N.Y.: Barnes & Noble, 2003. Print. Wilkerson, Doxey A. Foreword. The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. By Carter Godwin Woodson. New York, NY: Arno, 1968. Not Numbered. Print.