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EDUCATION AND BLACK SELF-IMAGE

Alvin F. Poussaint

Many of the civil rights gains in recent decades have done a great deal to modify the negative self-concept of the black man. The civil rights movement and the rise of militant black nationalism have brought a new sense of dignity and respect to those blacks most excluded from society by poverty and oppression in the rural south and northern ghetto. One factor that may have been important in helping to improve the self-image of the masses of Negroes was that black men were leading the struggle, and not white men. This fact in itself probably made Negroes, through the process of identification, take pride in their group and feel less helpless knowing that they could bring about positive change in their environment. The feleing that one can have "control" over social forces is crucial to one's feelings of ego-strength and self-esteem. Thus, the movement brought to the Negro a new sense of power in a country dominated by a resistant white majority.*
The self-esteem of black Americans was also enhanced as they were able to identify with the emergence of independent African nations who had black heads of state, and other officials of government. Negroes everywhere could feel, too, that they had nations that had a sovereignty in what used to appear as a white-controlled world. If African nations could throw off colonialism, why could not blacks be free from oppression in America?
This present black drive for self-determination has begun to permeate much of the struggle for black liberation in the United States and has spread to the very issue of the self-image and education of Negro children.
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*Poussaint, A. F., "The Negro American: His Self-Image and Integration," Journal of National Medical Association, Vol. 6, pp. 419-423, Nov. 1966 

Dr. Poussaint is Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, Massachusetts.

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Transcription Notes:
Reopened for Editing 2024-02-13 09:34:34