Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

life-style, yet they persist in their
ways .
To attribute this to psychological
maladjustment is to assume that
schools are more inherently correct
than people . Most black students
don't want to be like their family
doctor, physical education teacher
or their case worker ; they don't
want to sell insurance, be lawyers,
or even work in factories as apprentices
. The social sacrifice inherent
in achieving these positions
is too great for them . They must
be offered new alternatives, not just
alternative ways to become middleclass
Negroes .
In addition, it is unrealistic to
concentrate on enlargement of the
"black bourgeoisie" . For this group
has its classic creation as a buffer
zone between the masses of blacks
and the masses of whites . It cannot
exist without the existence of the
other two externally to itself. In
fact, if the masses of African-
Americans were to become middleclass
Negroes, they would havz negated
themselves, for there would
be no middle, only a full realization
of a white top and a black bottom .
Comparison of the positions held
now by Negro college graduates
and their white counterparts illustrates
this point vividly .
'Therefore, the absence of "respectable"
African-Americans in
the community is not the answer
to the problem . It is rather a failure
of the schools as part and parcel
of the system which spawns the
"black bourgeoisie" to be relevant
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969
to the community as a total institution
. From beginning to end, its
perspective, its program, and its
product have not addressed the
needs of the African-American.
Such a miscarriage of socio-intellectual
pregnancy has destroyed
the average African-American's respect
for education . The middleclass
Negro succeeds only at the
expense of his soul, while the soulful
blackbrother suffers a life of
economic insecurity. Both are
equally politically impotent and
hence the community is stagnant .
Moreover, in respect to soul, it
becomes apparent that soul is thus
more than a music style, a way of
walking-that-walk or talking-thattalk
. It becomes an inner drive
whose motor manifestations are
present in the aforementioned
traits . Soul becomes that which
leads one knowingly in a more
meaningful direction than synthetic
capitalist Christian materialism
temptingly invites . It's a natural
thang (i .e ., of nature), and as such
deserves more respect than we often
give it. It is, as Maulana Ron
Karenga points out, one thing the
white man has never been able to
deal with, because he can't understand
it . Therefore, neither his
schools nor anything else in his society
has ever, cannot, and probably
never will be able to handle
it : "The white boy engaged in the
worship of technology ; we must not
sell our souls for money and machines
."
We must move then to resurrect
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