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FREEDOMWAYS
FOURTH QUARTER 1972

publishing to write about the education of black people. Many of the people represented in What Black Educators Are Saying are late arrivers saying what has been better said before. And all that some black folk are saying about education may not be worth saying. The vision remains obscured, the contrast undelineated, the future unpredictable if not unpromising. 

Wright prefaces the book with the intention of pursuing a theme, humanizing the schools. What is meant by this is not clear in spite of the fact that he describes the contributors as "all humanly inspired voices to which we must listen for our own growth and for the enhancement of the nation's peaceable and orderly progress." He justifies the need for change in the schools by drawing a parallel with the "built-in parental oppression" against which adolescence rebels. This is an euphemistic metaphor to describe the oppression of black people by the dominant Euro-American culture. Also, the idea that power unconsciously abuses gives more credence to Wright's sensitivity that to his familiarity with the history of Negro education in the United States. The closing injunction of the foreword, to call upon "these beautiful brothers and sisters" for guidance and direction, rings of the preacher guiding his sheep, the readers, to a group of under-employed herders.

The articles themselves are uneven in quality. Under the first heading "The Black Educator," are several very poor ones. Preston Wilcox, the highlight of this section fails to see the continuity of development when he speaks of Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. Du Boise. First of all, it was not so much Washington's educational model that was repressive, it was rather monopoly of control and censorship he maintained as the go-between for funding agencies and black intellectuals. As for Du Bois, Wilcox is projecting his perspective back in time and, also, clearly  misunderstands the life work of Du Bois if he believes that Du Bois did not realize "that authentic blackness is not the replica of whiteness." Surely anyone who has read The Souls of Black Folk or The World and Africa knows that the orientation of Du Bois although scholarly, scientific, and thorough was hardly "white." Furthermore, in the article "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?"3 Du Bois does not come out the ardent integrationist that Wilcox makes him out to be. Du Bois was never willing to compromise the distinctive historical perspective and cultural values of black folk. Another point in question is the statement that it was SNCC

3 W.E.B. Du Bois, "Does the Negro Need Separate Schools?" Journal of Negro Education, July 1935, p. 335.

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