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FREEDOMWAYS                       FOURTH QUARTER 1972

Wright does, that "the spirit of decentralization must be accomplished." Few would disagree with the assumption that the education is in danger "when schools are too largely removed from a sense of responsibility to their clientele." This has been particularly true for the education of black children. Whites, both in the North and the South, have always exercised a great deal of community control, even if indirectly. Community control on the part of white communities has only been discovered to be insufficient since the Supreme Court Decision of 1954. A fundamental restructuring of power relationships will have to precede just expenditure of the nation's resources. The white version of neighborhood control calls for an economically suppressed black community to support a system of quality schools independently. The other accepted version is community control without purse-string control, a hollow concession.
  
Moynihan's thesis attributes the great difficulty in achieving further progress for blacks to the "disorganization of the Negro family resulting from the system of enslavement and its aftermath and the creation in the Negro of the Sambo syndrome." Samuel Allen, in a perceptive analysis of the state of the struggle, equivocates on this interpretation of black pathology. Now, there is great evidence in studies of slavery to show that Elkins' theory of the Sambo syndrome does not hold water.9 Aptheker's books document the resistance and revolt of black people against the condition of slavery. Frazier argued that blacks were totally defined by the experience of slavery, acquiring all standards of behavior from the white master. The degree to which their behavior deviated from the white "norm" was a function of the hardships of slavery and oppression. Herskovits, on the other hand, saw in the flexibility of the black family, its extended nature, its ability to function without a male always present, a carryover from African culture which did not necessarily represent "the disorganization of the Negro family." Allen in trying to be "objective" has missed the black reality. Casualties have occurred, men have been emasculated - particularly among the intellectuals who have the trying situation of constantly and self-consciously confronting white standards. The remarkable thing has been the resiliency of the spirit of pride. One recalls the memoirs of Booker T. Washington who witnessed his enslaved grandfather being whipped by the master. With each stroke of the lash he uttered, "Pray master, Pray." Whether hustling, leaving home to make a living, letting the welfare do its

9 See Ernest Kaiser, "Negro History: A Bibliographical Survey," Freedomways, Fourth Quarter 1967, pp. 335-345.

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