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Freedomways
Fourth Quarter 1968
fear of self-evaluation
The Jencks-Riesman study evoked a vociferous response from Negro college administrators. Though it is not my purpose to endorse Jenks-Riesman, some of their criticism is along the lines of what I have discussed here, though my concern is much more involved with the racial role of the black college. The replies, by four Negro college presidents, were published in the Summer, 1967 Harward Educational Review. Stephen J.Wright, director of the United Negro College Fund, slashed at the authenticity of Jencks-Reisman, noting:
"... had it not been written by men of considerable reputation and published in a respectable journal, it would have, in my judgment, attracted little attention."
Wright feared that such an article could do grave damage to "some heroic institutions - many of which have been and are being served by some of the most able and heroic teachers and administrators ever to grace the professions."
Each of the four replies deals so pointedle with the problems of, first, funding, and secondly, the reputation of the colleges that one gets the imperssion these gentlemen aren't concerned with anything else. Only Mays deals with an evaluation of what the black college should be doing. Certainly the battle to secure funds, and the work these men have done on behalf of the pribvate negro colleges deserve applause. But the obsessive concern with funding at the cost of ideology indicates that some sort of battle-fatigue is setting in or myopia induced by battle-fatigue.
Because if anything can be seen just beyond the horizon, it is that-not white critics like Jencks-Riesman (who can't and should'nt determine the role of our schools anyway)- but black students are disastisfied with their colleges. Demonstrations against administrations at Howard, Southern, Tuskegee, Fisk, and several other colleges have brought forth an insistent demand for black oriented studies and programs - which means that the students in these colleges are far more firmly rooted in reality than the administrators. All of the demonstrations that I have seen or read about have one thing in common: the couple of demands for a black-oriented curriculum with the national drive for black consciousness and political and economic strength (black power) which is catching like wildfire among our youth. 
Actually the demontrations give the colleges an out. They can make some modifications in programs long overdue and blame it on 
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