Viewing page 21 of 100

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

DILEMMA OF AFRO-AMERICAN EDUCATION   MOORE

faculty are hired by the departments at half price, the center paying the other half, at a time when black scholars are very much in demand. These arrangements are weak and are without excuse at wealthy institutions such as Michigan, Yale, or Cornell, where the only obstacles to autonomous departments of Afro-American Studies are the chauvinistic and paternalistic attitudes administrators hold. As a complement to Billingsley's essay, read Mike Thelwell's article "Black Studies, A Political Perspective," in the Massachusetts Review, Autumn 1969.

In Part IV, "Education Redefinition," is Dr. Wright's address on black studies. Dr. Wright holds his peculiar stance here as the spokesman of black people to whites. This posture subtly distorts the character of black studies. Rationalizing the development of Afro-American Studies in the university he says, "the so-called 'black experience' is ... a marginal experience through which American life can find clearer articulation and more helpful interpretation." This is a round-about way of defining the function of black studies as being to enlighten white scholars. Then, too, Wright understands the motivation of black students as being that they "want to be 'in' and not 'out' with reference to American life." Just how this objective is consistent with the cultural and political awareness of students who have inherited the SNCC legacy is not considered. Moreover, Wright caricatures "our" black students, "who want the America of today to work," as saying "Use us as a laboratory for developing the capacities and techniques to change which will be sorely needed for your future survival as well as ours." (p. 209). No doubt there are some who earn their way speaking in this vein, however, the main artery is carrying forth a swarm of proud, internationally conscious young people who have not forgotten the experiments of history and who have charted their path too carefully to be lured into the society's laboratory for problem cases. This "treat yourself to a nigger" reasoning is brought out again as Dr. Wright assures "us" that "our" black students have much to teach all of us in terms of emphatic "skills" and "want us to come to see them as persons determined to meet ruggedly and barely a challenging new world." This comes off as a pernicious form of exploitation of black students. Whether or not whites come to see them as determined or not, a generation of students is determined not only "to meet" this world, but to change it.

Other points, seemingly minor, reveal aspects of distorted perception. It is a projection of his own orientation, for example, that enables Wright to say that black students are afforded a small measure

283

Transcription Notes:
---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-19 23:55:18