Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

change in the former colonial societies
would be sponsored-but not
by the American State Department .
"Think Tanks" filled with the varied
but constant experience of
blackness might be established for
the sole purpose of analyzing specific
conflict situations from Detroit
to Angola (and beyond), and suggesting
directions of actions and
ideology for those who are struggling
to break away from the
hegemony of the West . From such
a university there would go out
teams of specialists in development
whose primary concerns would not
include the opening of wedges for
American influences . Rather their
search would be for ways in which
modernization might be purged of
its synonymous relationship with
Westernization and Americanization
.
Throughout the Slack University
and in all of its special projects,
the emphasis would be on the
search for new models, for new
systems, for new ways of life, free
from the suffocating grasp of the
most current forms of imperialism .
Not only would specialists be sent
out in such a search, but other
kinds of "specialists" would be
brought in . Representatives of the
anti-colonial forces, members of
Liberation Fronts, religious and
educational leaders from the re-
3 6
horning nations would be invited
and welcomed in order to give
deeper meaning to the searching .
Indeed, such a university might
well become a sanctuary of sorts
for some of the world's revolutionaries
. What better way to raise the
hard questions which many revolutions
often force honest intellectuals
to ask?
Such an institution would selfconsciously
be orienting its students
toward an understanding of
-and an appreciation for-the
myriad ways in which our experiences
here as colonials who were
brought to the "mother country"
parallel those of our brothers who
had to receive the emissaries of
countless white fatherlands . (lt
would, of course, also stress the
uniqueness of the Afro-American
colonial experience . ) As a part of
developing this sense of common
experience-and common rootssummer
study and Junior Years
abroad in Europe would likely become
the exception, and black students
would move toward Latin
America, Africa, India and Asia
for their experience of intercultural
exchange and overseas study . (This
direction would, of course, have
significant implications for the languages
taught in the institution .
German, for instance, might have
difficulties . ) Both student and faculty
exchanges with the non-Western
world would become a regular
part of the Black University's life .
The journal of such a center might
well seek to ally itself with the New
March 1968 NEGRO DIGEST