Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

This new information, however,
cannot be substituted for other
more traditional knowledge . It
must be additional . I hesitate to
use the term "supplementary" only
because some readers may assume
that I regard it as less important.
To the contrary, it is significant .
However, if the Negro student is
provided only with knowledge
about Negroes, then his education
will be as restricted as it has been
in the past . His vision, true, will
be black instead of white . But the
revisers of the curriculum will be
guilty of the same color-blindness
and narrow vision for which they
condemn the planners of the present
curriculum .
RESEA RCH
Despite the extravagances committed
in its name, research is the
consort of good teaching . A teacher
must have information about his
subject . Before significant changes
can be made in curricula for Negro
students, considerable research
will be needed . For, shamefully,
facts about Negroes are not known
or have been gathered by white
researchers, too frequently in
quickly published studies where a
limited sampling was used to substantiate
a pre-conceived generalization
about an entire population.
20
(Continued on page 64)
Just as predominantly Negro colleges
have been compared, unfavorably,
with the ideal of a college
or with the prestige institutions
rather than with predominantly
white colleges of comparable size
and endowment, so Negroes as
individuals and groups have been
evaluated against the ideal rather
than judged in comparison with
white peers of similar economic,
educational, and social background
.
New research is needed ; extensive
research is needed . There are
Negroes qualified to perform such
research . But ways must be devised
to provide researchers with
the time needed and to persuade
foundations to trust Negro researchers
to conduct scholarly
studies of Negroes . Without such
research, the new courses cannot
be offered, for it is better to teach
nothing than to teach something
which is known to be merely a
guess.
PUBLISHING
The Black University needs to
publish the research of its scholars .
Today, white publishers respect research
into problems of Negroes
primarily when it is conducted by
white men . A Negro scholar-
March 1968 NEGRO DIGEST