In the African-American community, the topic of education has long been one of some considerable controversy. To some, access to education has been seen as the way out of some of the most endemic social problems that the community faces. To others, education has been seen as a choice to assimilate with the majority culture (DeCuir-Gunby). In defiance to that, such institutions as the hip-hop culture have arisen, showing other ways (although more harmful) that members of the African-American community can make a name for themselves. This debate is not new; in Alice Walker’s The Color Purple and “Everyday Use,” both the promise and the perils of education rear their heads, and both the choice to receive an education and the choice to remain without one appear problematic at best. As a theme in these two stories, education appears to function, at best, as a double-edged sword.
In “Everyday Use,” Mama has struggled financially in order to be able to send Dee to a good university. Ironically, though, that education serves more as a point of division than anything else. When Mama was a child, her school had just been closed, and she had no access to education. Racism as well as the passive resistance that marked race relations at that time kept her out of school, and so she had no other choice but to spend her life working hard. Dee is lucky to have had a mother who could afford to put her through school, but the refinements and advantages that have come with that education have only created a barrier between Dee and the other members of her family (Singh). Indeed, Dee even uses her intellect as a tool for intimidation. She greets her mother with “Wa-su-zo Tean-o” (Walker), which is a greeting in some archaic African dialect that Mama is surely not likely to know. When Dee re-enters the world of Maggie and Mama, she threatens that world’s simplicity, and rather than toning things down, Dee seems bound and determined to show her mother and sister how superior she is. This is nothing new; as a child, Dee would often read to them “without pity,” trying to yank them out of their domestic complacency (Walker).
Not only has education created a barrier between Dee and her family, but it also has created a wedge within Dee’s identity. When she left home to pursue her education, she lost her sense of background and heritage that can only come from family. She comes back home a stranger, an oddity from a world that Mama and Maggie cannot recognize. Dee’s mind swims with dreams of civil rights and a refusal to tolerate any racism. While there is nothing wrong with these notions, the fact that Dee has lost respect for any ideas other than her own has torn her away from her original roots. Maggie, in contrast, only knows the world where she came from. She can barely read and subsists by following the commands which she is given (Walker). She has no capability for self-fulfillment. The irony is that both sisters, one mostly ignorant and one highly educated, appear to have lost the ability to find validation as individuals (Singh). Education, indeed, has been a curse in its presence as well as its absence.
The cycle of abuse and hate in The Color Purple demonstrates what happens in a world in which education is perpetually absent. The people who abuse one another in the novel are not the easily sketched monsters that populate the horror film genre (Singh). Instead, they are more complicated people who are only dealing with the behaviors that had been dealt out to them earlier in life. Harpo would not beat Sofia, even though she would not obey his instructions. It is not until Harpo’s father tells him that Sofia’s behavior is robbing him of masculinity, though, that Harpo gets the idea to beat her. Celie goes along with this, urging Harpo to beat Sofia because Celie is jealous of Sofia’s ability to stand up for herself (Walker). Mr. _____ abuses his family, much along the same lines of behavior that his own father had used with him.
In a way, the characters realize that the patterns of harm that fill their lives are cyclical in nature. Sofia mentions to Eleanor Jane that, because of society, it is virtually inevitable that her son will grow up and become a racist (Walker). It takes extreme behavior on the part of the women who are being abused – talking back to their men and then showing them a different way to live – to break the cycle.
It is difficult to imagine this sort of abusive cycle taking place in a culture in which education was more prevalent as an opportunity. People who spend time in the learning environments of secondary school and the university experience often discover different perspectives and behaviors than those with which they grew up (Noe & Jaymes). This means that inculcated behaviors are often leached out of the mind, or at least brought up for question, as a result of exposure to other ways of thinking. Exposure, then, can be a saving grace, as long as it teaches one to respect multiple perspectives (Thompson). In the case of The Color Purple, the lack of exposure to education ensures that the same patterns of behavior are going to happen, generation after generation.
In the case of “Everyday Use,” though, education does not have this effect. There are times when exposure to other ideas makes people embrace those ideas, holding just as tightly to those as others hold on to their own ideas. This makes compromise difficult, because tightly clinging to one set of ideas reduces one’s ability to see other perspectives. It does not matter whether it is Maggie’s inability to imagine any life beyond the simple confines of menial labor, or Dee’s inability to imagine any joy in a life that is indeed simple. Both perspectives limit the ability to perceive value in the perspectives of others.
The value of education, then, as expressed by The Color Purple and “Everyday Use,” is qualified at best. There are scant benefits of a full education if one does not use that opportunity to expand one’s mind. Simply changing the location or focus of one’s narrow mind is not helpful. Without education, the stories imply, there is little to life beyond the simple and menial. With education, there is the peril that narrow-mindedness may not improve. There is also the hope that exposure will bring wisdom. Based on what happens to Dee and her family, though, Walker appears to be pessimistic about that possibility.
Works Cited
DeCuir-Gunby, Jessica. “A Review of the Racial Identity Development of African American Adolescents: The Role of Education.” Review of Educational Research 79(1): 103-124.
Noe, Marcia and Jaynes, Michael. “Teaching Alice Walker’s ‘Everyday Use’ Employing Race, Class and Gender.” In Alice Walker, New Edition, Harold Bloom, ed. New York: Infobase Publishing, 2009, 155-168.
Singh, Gurdev. “Quest for Identity and History: A Black Feminist Analysis of Alice Walker’s The Color Purple.” Academicia 3(1): 57-64.
Thompson, A. “Not the Color Purple: Black Feminist Lessons for Education Caring.” Harvard Educational Review 68(4): 522-555.
Walker, Alice. “Everyday Use”.
Walker, Alice. The Color Purple. New York: Mariner, 2003. Trenton: Rutgers University Press, 1994.
