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Africa or
America
The Emphasis in Black Studies Programs
By
Marvin X
and Nathan Hare * *
* * * On
Cecil Brown's
Dude,
Where's My Black Studies Department
By
Marvin X
Brown's essay appeared in the Eastbay Express newspaper,
December 1, 2004. Novelist Brown is known for his
Life and
Loves of Mister Jive Ass Nigger.
I have discussed this topic in my essay “Neo-Colonial Black
Studies” (See In the Crazy House Called America, Essays,
Marvin X, 2002, Black Bird Press, Castro Valley). Although Cecil
clearly could use a course in statistics, his general idea is on
point but it must be handled with caution because of the Pan
African nature of his discussion. This delicate topic has wide implications
for the future of the Pan African world because demographics are
changing so rapidly it bewilders the mind.
New Negroes have arrived in
America, the old Negroes have bitten the dust, victims of the
criminal justice system in particular, but certainly they,
especially black men, have no presence in the academic system.
Cecil noted after that initial radical thrust to establish black
studies in the 60s, they were immediately removed from the
student body and the faculty of colleges and universities coast
to coast.
The system realized who
they were and knew they had to go, after all, the system could
not contain them. They were immediately replaced with acceptable
Negroes, the more pliant variety of military types and yes, in
many cases, immigrant negroes more acceptable to the colonial
college administrators.
Thus Africans and Caribbean
Negroes were in many cases less radical, even though much of the
African American radical tradition comes from immigrants, such
as Marcus Garvey, George Padmore, Kwame Toure, Malcolm X and
Farakhan. As Amina Baraka informed me, "We're all West
Indians." And this is true because kidnapped Africans were
brought to the Caribbean for "the breaking in," then
transferred to North America and elsewhere.
And we must ask ourselves would we rather have a radical
immigrant African in black studies or a reactionary Negro only
because he is a Negro.
But Cecil's point is that
the American academic system feels the immigrant
Negroes/Africans are easier to control than the violent black
American male. So the truth is immigrants have replaced Negroes
coast to coast, but even black American males who remain are of
the passive variety, and even those with a Pan African ideology
or Afrocentric approach to black studies are often at odds with
the original mission of black studies that was to focus on the
plight of the so-called negroe in the ghettoes of America, how
to uplift him out of his morass and degradation.
The focus on Africa and Pan
Africanism was secondary to this central focus, but such a focus
by definition requires a radical intellectualism that the
University industrial complex of necessity must avoid. The
African and Caribbean intellectuals found acceptable on
campuses, naturally feel issues from their frame of reference
are priority, not issues critical to "Black
Americans."
While this emphasis is on
bones in Egypt, rarely will one find students going to
Mississippi and Alabama to research their ancestors. Yet it
became clear to me that until I made peace with the South, I
could not reconnect with Africa in any meaningful sense. Matter
of fact, some of those founding radicals of black studies claim
their ancestors are in the South and go no farther.
After all, they say, what can Africa teach
American Negroes? The poorest Negro in the ghetto is richer than
the majority of Africans. The poorest ghetto Negro has running
water, electricity, a bathroom, televisions in every room, at
least two cars, and other amenities out of reach to most
Africans and Caribbean blacks. It is for this reason that
he is the object of envy and jealousy, although we must place
the source of this madness to colonialism and neo-colonialism.
And of course the Negroes suffer the same.
The replacement of radical students and professors in black
studies with immigrant Negroes not only represents the legacy of
colonialism, including divide and conquer, but also the new
demographics in America, it reflects the pervasive criminal
justice system and the desire for immigrant Africans to take
full advantage of the amenities of America. For sure, all the
discussion of African culture and civilization is not leading to
a mass exodus of Africans back to Africa, and for all their
jealousy and envy, Africans are trying hard to stay in close
proximity to Negroes, even if it kills them, as with Diallo and
the Haitian brother who fell victim to the plunger.
The mission of black studies awaits redemption and African
Americans must again crash the gates of Academia or construct
their own radical academic institutions as I am suggesting with
the University of Poetry. See Manifesto
of The University of Poetry.
Marvin X, poet,
playwright, essayist, is considered the father of Islamic
literature in America, also one of the founders of the Black
Arts Movement. He has taught at Fresno State University,
University of California, Berkeley, UC San Diego, San Francisco
State University, University of Nevada, Reno, Mills College,
Laney and Merritt colleges in Oakland. His latest collection of
essays is In the Crazy House Called America, and for 2005 he is
publishing Wish I Could Tell You The Truth, essays, Black Bird
Press, Castro Valley.
Contact him at mrvnx@yahoo.com.
* * * *
*
Reply
from Dr. Nathan Hare
Marvin,
right on to that.
It happens I mentioned this development in 1981, in a conversation
with Maulana Karenga, who put it in the last chapter
("Challenges and Possibilities") of his comprehensive
textbook,
Introduction to Black Studies, the following year
(Talmadge Anderson may also have referred to the matter later in
his apt
Introduction to Afro-American Studies).
Officially blacklisted by late Senator S.I. Hayakawa, and banished
and blocked from offices in the Ebony Tower since 1969, I answered
a classified ad in 1981 in the New York Times -- on the urging of
an acquaintance in Philadelphia -- soliciting applicants for the
chairmanship of the black studies department at Temple University,
and was summoned there for an interview.
When I arrived at Temple's gates, I immediately came face to face
with The Hiring Committee, consisting of the whole of the tenure
track members of the black studies department at that time, three
continental Africans. They asked me to name three journals.
Bemused, I said I was a contributing editor of three journals,
including the Western Journal of Black Studies, and named that
three, without including The Black Scholar, which I had helped to
found.
The chief administrative ally of my African examiners, a black
feminist "African-American" dean of some kind,
challenged me in her turn to name "ten must books." To
her I replied "there's no book a student can't do
without" -- which virtually sent her screaming
slobbering into the arms of Bella Abzug.
In time the continental Africans chose the most conspicuously
African candidate among us, the one that looked, sounded and
thought more African than thou, but less black, the one with the
Africanized name. That day black studies came to a final fork in
the road -- and took the trail leading back to Antiquity.
Nathan
www.blackthinktank.com
Dr.
Nathan
Hare fought to establish the first Ethnic Studies program in
America at San Francisco State University. He is the author of the
classic sociological study
The Black Anglo-Saxons.
* *
* * *
Cecil Brown holds a PhD in African-American Literature,
Folklore, and Theory of Narrative from the University of
California, Berkeley. He has published a number of novels, short
stories, screenplays, and journal articles relating to
African-American literature and life, and has taught classes in
literature and popular culture at UC Berkeley, the University of
San Francisco, and other universities throughout California.
* * * * *
Cecil Brown.
Dude,
Where's My Black Studies Department (North
Atlantic Books, 2007)
Blacks have been vanishing from college campuses in the United
States and reappearing in prisons, videos, and movies. Cecil
Brown tackles this unwitting "disappearing act" head on, paying
special attention to the situation at UC Berkeley and the
University of California system generally. Brown contends that
educators have ignored the importance of the oral tradition in
African American upbringing, an oversight mirrored by the media.
When these students take exams, their abilities are not tested.
Further, university officials, administrators, professors, and
students are ignoring the phenomenon of the disappearing black
student – in both their admissions and hiring policies. With
black studies departments shifting the focus from African
American and black community interests to black immigrant
issues, says Brown, the situation is becoming dire. Dude,
Where’s My Black Studies Department? offers both a scorching
critique and a plan for rethinking and reform of a crucial but
largely unacknowledged problem in contemporary society.
—Publisher
Other Books by Cecil Brown
Life and
Loves of Mister Jive Ass Nigger (1971)
/
Stagolee Shot Billy (2004) /
I, Stagolee, A Novel (2006) /
Target Zero: A Life in Writing
By
Eldridge Cleaver, edited by Kathleen Cleaver foreword by H.L.
Gates, Afterword Cecil Brown * * * * *
* * * * *
update
21 June 2008 |
