Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

springboard for a sense of collective
destiny . Shut off from involvement
in the educational process
(during slavery, it was unlawful to
teach a black person to read or
write), black Americans, then
largely inhabiting the Sauth, saught
adjustment by way of supernatural
rationalizations such as the superstition
still extant that "if you read
tao much you're baund to go
crazy."
The problem today, though
many-faceted, is irritated by the
gross invisibility of black students
-despite their seemingly mushrooming
physical presence-on
most white college campuses . The
neglect of the black student's needs
may be apparent but acutely unnoticed
in the scarcity, for example,
of courses dealing forthrightly with
the black race, its problems and its
contributions, in American society .
"I sort of thought Negroes came
here to try to become white," a
white student leader recently admitted
.
In the wake of a general black
revolt, the black college student's
awareness of the psychology of exclusion
grows ever keener, and he
longs at last for educational and
political visibility . Accordingly,
while the perfunctory nature (and
general obsolescence) of higher
education in America plagues white
students as well, the black student
is impelled to seek visibility ("get
it together" and "move on up" and
"come back home") through sharp
demands for symbols such as the
presence on campus of at least a
taken number of black professors
and courses exposing black history
and culture, down to the inclusion
of hog maws and chitterlings on
cafeteria menus which already include
beef stroganoff, meatballs
and spaghetti, and occasionally,
chopsuey .
Black students see themselves as
window-dressing tokens of black
participation in campus life, knowing
that, as individuals, they are
"in," but nevertheless wanting general
recognition of the fact that they
are there . This contrasts with the
situation of black students on the
Negro college campus, where protest
daes occasionally reflect racial
and color considerations-stemming
chiefly from Negro college
conformity to the mores and values
of the white college system-but
more typically takes the form of a
basic quest for personal freedom :
the liberalizing of curfew regulations
and other aspects of the right
not to be treated as children while
training to be adults .
By comparison, the white college
permits a greater degree of freedom
(thought not as much as they claim
to believe in and not enough to
please today's generation of students
reared on the permissive approach,
members of an age group
which constitutes an increasing majority
while treated as a kind of
minority) . Particularly is the white
college characterized by a greater
spirit of inquiry than the typical
Negro college . This intellectual activity
rubs off an the student . Black
students become concerned just as
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST