Summary

Owens opens On Education with the argument that freedom correlates with personal responsibility: “freedom is the reward for fulfilling personal responsibility” (130). Alternatively, slavery removed all personal responsibility and even Jim Crow prevented Americans from being granted true freedom. However, LBJ went too far, Owens asserts, in arguing, “But freedom is not enough” (131). Freedom, for Black America, was enough. 1964 should have been a new beginning of assuming full responsibility over their lives, but rather, “just as soon as we were given personal responsibility, it was taken away” (131). This was the beginning of Black victimization, arguing that Black American couldn’t and shouldn’t be responsible for themselves. This -- the belief that white Americans should assume responsibility for Black America’s faults -- is, Owens argues, a form of white power; it concludes that Black America is inferior. The moment that Blacks were freed...