Negro Digest - Freedom Archives
Negro Digest - Freedom Archives
Negro Digest - Freedom Archives
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a situation in a different manner<br />
when blacks are involved than<br />
when whites only are involved .<br />
Thus, a question as to whether a<br />
<strong>Negro</strong> should quarterback the football<br />
team when he is the best quarterback<br />
involves a racist attitude .<br />
Similarly, concern about whether a<br />
qualified black student should be<br />
given a Rhodes Scholarship is a<br />
racist attitude . The black students<br />
feel that white students working<br />
among the white students to eradicate<br />
racist attitudes is a fundamental<br />
contribution that white students<br />
can make toward better racial understanding.<br />
The black student speaks of relevance<br />
. He says that the curriculum<br />
must be "relevant to the black<br />
experience ." While this sounds like<br />
so much jargon, and is spoken by<br />
some of the students with an almost<br />
ritualistic fervor, their concern<br />
is a valid one. What the black<br />
students mean is that the curriculum<br />
should eive them some insights<br />
about the black man's role in society<br />
and help them to develop<br />
those skills which will enable them<br />
to improve life in the ghetto . Thus,<br />
the black students want courses in<br />
black art . black music, the economics<br />
of poverty and the economics<br />
of the ghetto . This does not<br />
mean that most black students<br />
want to go back to the ghetto as<br />
social workers or teachers . They<br />
want to become participating<br />
members of society in all of its aspects<br />
. and want to use their knowledge<br />
to help black people in many<br />
ways. The present generation of<br />
NEGRO DIGEST Mareh 1969<br />
black students is aware of those<br />
omissions in their education which<br />
if rectified might help them to be<br />
more effective in their efforts to<br />
improve the lot of all black pea<br />
ple, not just themselves . The cry<br />
for relevance parallels a similar cry<br />
by the student activists in colleges<br />
all over the nation. Those students<br />
are vitally concerned with poverty,<br />
racism, war and injustice . They,<br />
too, feel that the classical tools of<br />
scholarship have not been particularly<br />
helpful to them in dealing<br />
with these concerns. While they<br />
concede that a firm grounding in a<br />
variety of subject areas eventually<br />
might be helpful to them, the urgency<br />
of their youth and the urgency<br />
of the problems that society<br />
faces leads them to cry for more<br />
relevance in their education now.<br />
The present emphasis on programs<br />
for black students offends<br />
many persons, white and black,<br />
because they feel that such an overt<br />
emphasis merely stimulates separatism<br />
and racial divisiveness. At a<br />
first glance, this proposition might<br />
appear to be valid . However, we<br />
must realize that self-respect and<br />
equality are not bestowed on one<br />
group by another, but rather must<br />
be gained by the group being discriminated<br />
against by its own efforts<br />
. This is not to say that white<br />
people cannot play important roles<br />
in the process, but the black man<br />
must be his own spokesman, his<br />
own strategist, and must mobilize<br />
the sentiment among his own people<br />
for change . In the process,<br />
there is apt to be a strong overreac-<br />
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