Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

aising a question regarding in exactly
what ways does the black experience
address the problem of
racism encountered by the black
community in the areas of housing
and employment, for example .
What curricular expression of the
black experience would relate the
black university more effectively to
the black community? Is the creation
of a black consciousness in the
minds and hearts of black people
more important than assisting them
with their daily struggle for survival?
Are the two problems the
same thing? Anyone familiar with
the long and often bitter struggle
in our colleges and universities not
only to get "Black Studies," but a
particular ideological brand of
Black Studies, will know that these
are not trivial questions .
' In a footnote to a widely talked
about but seldom read volume,
Frantz Fanon makes an important
observation about the decision of
the president of Senegal "to include
the study of the idea of Negro-ism
in the curriculum . If this decision
was due to an anxiety to study historical
causes, no one can criticize
it. But if on the other hand it was
taken in order to create black selfconsciousness,
it is simply a turning
of his back upon history" .° The
point Fanon is making is that the
people are helped not by excessive
investments in the study of the people's
culture but by addressing current
problems felt by the people .
Of the four authors who discuss
,the curriculum of the black uni-
NEGRO DIGEST March 1969
versity, three of them (McWorter,
Henderson, and Harding) seem to
give clear priority to the humanistic
sciences . Henderson is quite explicit
that "such a university would
almost by definition involve chiefly
those disciplines which are humancentered,
i.e., the social sciences,
the behavioral sciences, literature,
art and the like ."g Moreover, "the
faculty of the University (would)
be staffed with Black Humanists
and Specialists in Blackness" .s And
although he says that the non-humanistic
sciences "should have . . .
an honored place in the curriculum",1°
it is obvious where the resources
of such a university would
be invested .
I want to state the strongest possible
disagreement with this bifurcation
of the black experience . It
is the logical outcome of a narrow
conception of black identity which,
if actually pursued, would isolate
the black university even further
than some of these same authors
say it is today from the black community
.
If, as Stokely Carmichael and
Charles Hamilton persuasively argue,
"the process of, political modernization
must take place"~l in
both the black and white communities
in order to treat adequately the
problems of racism, then a Black
University which invests a preponderance
of its resources in black
humanistic studies is seriously dis
advantaged in its intentions to help
(Coruinued on page 96)
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