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FREEDOMWAYS                                            FOURTH QUARTER 1968

white middle-class America and wipe out, as completely as it is possible, the "blemish" of being born black. Classes, lectures, the desire to encourage students to prepare for the professions may be the super-structure of the Negro college, but this particular behavioral training is it substructure, its viscera, its internal thematic motion.
  The determining factor is always the same: to counteract whatever stereotype or slander white America levels against black people by cultivating the opposite extreme. We will graduate from our colleges, go to the "great universities" of the North and obtain graduate and professional degrees. Certainly then white America will accept us. We will dress in formal western clothing whenever possible, particularly when come in contact with whites. Certainly then white America will not confuse us with "common Negroes" who dress poorly. We will cultivate accents which are so foreign from southern black speech that if a white person were talking to us over the telephone "he would never know." Certainly such speech patterns will pave the way for acceptance. We will never develop a taste or appreciation for the music of our people, for the blues, for jazz, for our popular music, for such music marks the stigma of "common" Negroes of the street and plantation. If such tastes are not permanently eradicable, the better to keep them within the confines of the home, or someone, possibly a white friend in the soon-to-come integrated future, will know we are not "cultured." After all, hadn't white America always said it would treat us decently if we acted right, became like them, pulled ourselves up by our bootstraps "the way they did." (My philosophy teacher at Morehouse remarked one morning in a state of bewilderment that he didn't see why he had to sit in the back of the bus "with all I know about Plato.")
  What of ourselves? Surely the first principle of any education is self-knowledge. The man who doesn't know himself and cannot accept his own reality doesn't know anything. As black people, we certainly have a right to expect that if the literature of black people, the music of black people, the history and study of the black liberation struggle are taught anywhere in America, they should be taught in black colleges. Isn't this what we are concerned with because it deals with our particular aspect of reality? And certainly if we are to be even remotely well educated and face the world with confidence, with poise, we should learn about the contributions, the struggles, the accomplishments of our own people, shouldn't we?
  The answer of the Negro college has been quite clear: wear your white shirt and black tie, and everything will be cool. 

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