Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

passive role and assumed that the
experience of blackness is irrelevant
to Western history and civilization
and hence to our students'
(and our own) search for identity .
The single revolutionary concept
that har emerged in recent years is
that the black experience is not
only relevant in such a search, it
is fundarnental and crucial . One
might almost call it archetypal, for
from it can be derived not only
America's quest for selfhood but,
indeed,-since the black experience
is also the type of the colonial
experience and reaction to it-the
whole modern experience of Europe
as well . How absurd it is,
then, to assume, as some critics
do, that a Black University would
exist in a vacuum, when the question
of identity-the question of
blackness-is more than a matter
of pigmentation, when it is ultimately
a moral and philosophical
position.
In other words, one finally wills
to be black . This is what the fuss
is all about-Albert Cleage, Adam
Powell, Walter White, Frank Silvera,
willed in varying degrees to
be black . My firm belief is that,
by willing to be black in that philosophical
sense, our schools can
make a greater contribution to our
personal well-being and to the
NEGRO DIGEST March 1968
world at large than by any other
means that I can presently see .
What does this will-to-blackness
entail?
It entails a certain double vision
-not the double vision of Du
Bois,* but a shift in perspective,
in which one looks inward ( into
himself and the group) and sees
outward with sharper insight ; in
which one looks backward (into
his history and his cultural roots)
and discovers that he is looking forward
. It is like looking backward
in time though one is looking forward
in space through a telescope .
If through this process one discovered
God in the actual act of creation
(and with a new physics we
might), one's knowledge would be
complete . Vaughan, the poet
said, "There is in God, they say,
a deep and dazzling darkness ."
And it is for the reason of this liberating
God within us that we must
confront our blackness . Immediately
we must confront it, because
we have to no inconsiderable extent
Africanized this country . That
time it was unconscious and passive
. This time it must be otherwise,
for unless the values inherent
in "Soul" and "Negritude" are
made to prevail in this country,
we may yet find ourselves at Armageddon,
across the seas, in our
skies, and in our own city streets .
Assuming then my estimate of
the importance of the Black University
to be valid, I shall briefly
discuss what seems to me the feasibility
of such an institution .
Souls of Black Folk
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