Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

efers to the dangerous possibility
that advocates of the Black University
concept will be lured into
the trap of believing in the devils,
actually believing that funds/resources/positions
will be made
available for creative work . (I was
tricked on two occasions in as many
years, though my action was considerably
more naive than what I
really believed and was told over
and over and over again. Whew! ) .
The colonial institutions (especially
major universities and the Ford
Foundation) use their vast resources
to blow people's minds and
to cop. And while the neo-colonialist
"predominantly Negro" college
has pull here, it is not resources
but traditions which often
trick folks . What one discovers is
that these traditions are often more
manufactured than real and, when
real, frequently have been abused
by the colleges .
Reference Group conflicts often
result from inflated expectations,
not to mention the serious ego
problems facilitated in the process.
Simply put, the problem concerns
who (or what group)-Black People
are to think of as they prepare
to move . This is often related to
what audiences they speak to,
where they send proposals for
funding, where they choose to publish,
who they relate to as far as
colleges are concerned, etc . The
colonial confrontation is classic in
that it presents the best traditional
form of confrontation : Blacks directly
facing white authority and
20
power . The neo-colonial problem
is ambiguous here . As Blacks move
toward a common analysis and
hold onto the goal of liberation as
manifested in the Black University,
Negroes of all ideological persuasions
and experiences move to neutralize,
to polemicize, and to expel
Blacks from their schools. Often
brotherhood alone prevents a San
Francisco State type struggle from
emerging at Morehouse, though
this pattern is subject to shift at any
moment . (Note the recent unpublicized
burnings around the Atlanta
University Center following Martin
Luther King Jr .'s funeral and a
recent campus visit by Stokely Carmichael
. )
An increasingly important concern
is how the limited resources
committed to the Black University
concept are being diffused throughout
the country. Dig it : the following
"together" brothers are scattered
at white schools throughout
the country : Nathan Hare, Alvin
Pouissant, Robert Browne, Charles
Hamilton, St . Clair Drake, Harry
Edwards, Price Cobbs, William
Grier, Edgar Beckham . And those
Negro schools with Black faculty
are unique, even when every effort
is made to stifle their work and to
get rid of them . There is, consequently,
no center for revolutionary
Black Education, and that
shouldn't come as a big surprise .
Only the most secure white colleges
are announcing grandiose plans for
the recruitment of Black faculty
(Note the recent UCLA announce-
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST