Syvanen, you're right. Ms. Shaw, President of the Pope Center for Higher Education, does not get any of this discussion. Not the political impact, not the social impact, none of it.

Witness:
"But Tuskegee was about a lot more than farming. It was about teaching practical trades along with productive work habits. Certainly, many African-Americans who were barely a generation away from slavery benefited from this education."

Pardon my sarcasm, but "Really?" Tell me exactly what more do people who were enslaved, who worked long hard days in cotton fields, tobacco fields, farm fields, kitchens need to learn about "productive work habits?" What other "practical trades" would you need to learn if you've been working you whole life, from the time you were able to comprehend "pluck this boll off and put it in this bag as fast as you can," until you went to your grave? Does she really think --- no, I won't bother to ask, because the answer is already clear to me. She does.

"I doubt that even W.E.B. Du Bois thought that an academic postsecondary education was suited for everybody, white or black." Ms. Shaw adds the "white or black" knowing full well that Washington's educational institution was not designed to "educate" poor whites in the region. And the pervasive attitudes of the time were that black people were genetically inferior to whites, could not learn like whites because they lacked intellect to do so. It is a belief that continues, cloaked in other rhetoric, today.

"Although farming provided many Americans with a good living during much of the century, it was not an industry on which to build long-term prosperity." And yet, there were tens of thousands of white farmers who were able to provide long term prosperity for their families across this country, acquire property, which as we know is the basis for the acquisition of wealth and economic security.