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If we are serious about changing the
educational experiences of Black students, we must address those
obstacles that impede their intellectual stimulation including
fundamental problems of perspective bias and conceptual flaws
that corrupt education research.
CORIBE's
approach call attentions to ways the ideological corruption of
research, buttressed by the mainstream research orthodoxy,
blocks the development of beneficial knowledge, education
practice, and policy.
The findings and recommendations presented
in this volume also illuminate the far-reaching social costs of
alienating, soul-damaging education—costs that top-down,
corporate-driven, for-profit reform efforts fail to address.
Ameliorative reforms may facilitate individual economic goals
for a few but not our collective advancement and empowerment of
Black people and our communities.
Moreover, the evolving “diversity”
discourse in the U.S. too often encourages a false hope in
“multicultural chic”—hybridity, inclusiveness, anything
but African. While Europeans are attempting to forge a new
pluralism and respect for their multiple heritages and
languages, African people are being cut off from our collective
identity and care for each other, strengths that have been so
integral to our survival, which is clearly in jeopardy.
Indeed, the news coming out of our
communities in the U.S., the Diaspora and out of Africa is cause
for alarm: 28
percent of Black men in the U.S. will be sent to jail or prison
in their lifetime; women and girls of African descent globally
are bearing the brunt of the violence and poverty ravaging our
communities and villages; of 38 million cases of AIDS in
the world, 34 million are in Africa; a genocidal war against the
Black population of western Sudan portends the latest of “the
world’s greatest humanitarian crises” on the continent while
the “new scramble for Africa” takes place in the guise of
“tribal conflict” (New Internationalist, 2004).
In the midst of this global crisis and the
abject state of Black education that is painstakingly
illuminated in this volume, there are hopeful signs, however.
This 50th year after the Supreme Court’s landmark Brown
decision another watershed event, the 40th anniversary of the
Freedom Schools has also been celebrated.
During the Civil Rights movement SNCC
activists joined with fearless local people in Mississippi under
conditions of sheer terror to create these extraordinary
liberated spaces for education. In this new century, young
artists and activists are bringing educational messages of high
moral and socially redeeming value in spite of the massive
onslaught of ghetto-fabulous cultural capital promoted by the $5
billion “Hip-hop economy” (Chuck D, 1997; KRS-ONE, 2003).
Reparations, no longer a fringe
conversation, has entered even the venerated
“halls of ivy” as institutions such as Brown
University are using the tools of scholarly inquiry and ethical
introspection to reveal more instances of mainstream dependency
on “benefits” derived from our “Holocaust of Holocausts”
(Moore, Sanders & Moore, 1995).
Some may wonder about or even object to the
attention given to Africa in this initiative. Why focus on
learning African language or on what is going on over there, or
in Brazil, when “we have so many problems of our own to deal
with right here?” Or, “Our children need to pass these tests
so they can get a job.”
Such short-sightedness will not serve us
well. This is
because our dispossession in the U.S. is part of a system of
global hegemony that transcends both individual opportunities as
well as our domestic predicament. Furthermore, as the title of
this volume suggests, the well-being of the human family is also
imperiled by these patterns of exclusion and domination.
A recent Chautauqua Institute lecture
titled, “Why Africa Matters” is also worth mentioning.
In this lecture H. J. de Blij (O’Grady, 2004),
distinguished professor of geography at Michigan State
University, emphasizes the African foundation of our human
interconnectedness.
“We are all Africans,” he observes:
“It is where we learned to speak, where we learned to
live in communities, where we did our first art, it is where we
made our first music. . Man [sic] would understand himself
better if he knew Africa better.”
Of five reasons why Africa matters (or should matter) to
all Americans, the second one that Professor de Bilj cites is
that eleven percent of the U.S. population is African American.
“For that reason alone,” he concludes, “we should
re-connect.”
Re-connect? How? What do “we” need to
know to “re-connect?” On whose terms?
Sadly, like most of our fellow citizens, as several of
the chapters in this volume demonstrate, neither African
Americans nor Diaspora Africans are being educated to feel
connected to Africa, nor are we sufficiently informed about
Africa’s best interests to act accordingly.
Celebrated Hip-Hop artist and author Chuck
D (1997) sums up the gravity of our mis-education succinctly:
“Brothers and sisters in Africa have been lied to about us,
just as we have been lied to and misinformed about them” (p.
162). Furthermore, our particular disaffection from our African
heritage and identity is a burden that non-Africans do not have
to bear. This is the crime against our humanity.
What have we learned from the CORIBE
initiative that can address the conditions of Black education?
The transformative agenda that CORIBE has distilled
shifts the research framework beyond a narrow focus on so-called
academic “dis-identification” (the “acting white”
hypothesis) or the “stereotype threat,” the “achievement
gap,” the “skills gap” or quick-fix school reforms.
Instead this volume presents research on
proven solutions—best practices—that prepare Black students
and other students to achieve at high levels of academic
excellence and to be agents of their own socio-economic and
cultural transformation.
The vision of Black education that CORIBE
is advancing is grounded in two important premises: 1) Education
is a basic human right and 2) Humane and equitable education for
and about Black people is a condition of humane and equitable
education, justice and human freedom for all.
The globally inclusive approach to Black
Education as a field of study, as well as the research and
practice presented in this volume, take into consideration the
experiences African descent people share with other historically
subordinated groups in the U.S. and in the global South.
Racialized disparity and alienation are inexorable
outcomes of the “power-knowledge-economics regime” in which
white supremacy reigns and corrodes education at every
level—for students, teachers and teacher educators as well as
other scholars in academia. More so than studying these matters
to produce a conventional report, CORIBE
was designed as a broad-based participatory process to re-frame
our thinking about the issues that created the need for this
initiative.
Pointing toward new directions for
research, education and social action, the powerful
documentation assembled in this volume demonstrates the
expertise of educators who know how to provide culturally
nurturing, enriching and liberating education across the
disciplines in schools and community settings.
CORIBE’s
Transformative Research and Action Agenda (Appendix A)
underscores the importance of linking research and social action
to be undertaken by the global community of African-descent
scholars/activists and our allies, within and also independently
of AERA.
Fortunately, this work has already begun.
In the Postscript that follows “Bill” Watkins affirms the
dedication, passion and hope among those who have stepped
fearlessly into the fray.
In conclusion, this book and the exemplary
work of the Commission on Research in Black Education testify
that we are prepared to battle the forces of barbarism—whether
ideological, institutional and cultural practices or
policies—that dare to exclude Black children here and there in
the world from their rightful futures.
Civilization and human freedom in the new century hang in
the balance. . . .
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It may look as if all we ever did
was to endure this history of ruin, taking no steps to
end the negative slide and begin the positive turn. That
impression is false. Over these disastrous millennia
there have been Africans concerned to work out solutions
to our problems and to act on them. . . .
[E]ven in defeat the creative ones
left vital signs. They left traces of a moral mindpath
visible to this day, provided we learn again to read
pointers to lost ways. Then, connected with past time
and future space through knowledge recovered, thinking
Africans seeking one another in this common cause will
meet the best of humanity for the work ahead: ending the
past and current rule of slavers.
We are
not after the slave-foreman power that, under the
killer’s continuing rule, is blind ambition’s hollow
prize. We are after the intelligent understanding of all
our realities, not simply the politics of power. We are
after intelligent action to change these realities. For
we intend, as Africans, to retrieve our human face, our
human heart, the human mind our ancestors taught to
soar. That is who we are, and why.
–Ayi
Kwei Armah (Osiris Rising, pp. 9-10) |
Source: Joyce E. King (ed). Black
Education: A Transformative
Research and Action Agenda for the New Century (2005)* *
* * *
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She
has published many articles as well that address the role
of cultural knowledge in effective teaching and teacher
preparation, black teachers’ emancipatory pedagogy, research
methods, black studies epistemology and curriculum change. King
is a graduate of Stanford University where she received a Doctor
of Philosophy degree in social foundations and a Bachelor of
Arts degree in sociology. She also holds a certificate from the
Harvard Institute in educational management.Click to purchase
Black
Education. There is also a video
documentary |
posted 9 November 2007
*
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Zippety Doo Dah, Zippety-Ay: How Satisfactch'll Is
Education Today? Toward a New Song of the South
Dr. Joyce E. King on Black
Education and New Paradigms
In their support
of Black education, by 1964, the General Education Board (GEB)
spent more than $3.2 million dollars in gifts to support
Black education. This captivating book begins with a
foreword written by Robin D.G. Kelley who reflects that he
learned one lesson from Watkins, “If we are to create new
models of pedagogy and intellectual work and become
architects of our own education, then we cannot simply
repair the structures that have been passed down to us. We
need to dismantle the old architecture so that we might
begin anew” (pg. xiii). Why don’t the school reformers who
mandate educational laws experience such an awakening?—Review
by AC Snow
Source:
Cre3Design
* *
* * *
music website >
http://www.kalamu.com/bol/
writing website >
http://wordup.posterous.com/
daily blog >
http://kalamu.posterous.com
twitter >
http://twitter.com/neogriot
facebook >
http://www.facebook.com/kalamu.salaam
*
* * * *
Men
We Love, Men We Hate /
Ways of
Laughing (Kalamu ya Salaam)
The State of African Education
(April 200)
Attack On Africans Writing Their Own History Part 1 of 7
Dr Asa
Hilliard III speaks on the assault of academia on Africans writing and
accounting for their own history.
Dr Hilliard is A teacher,
psychologist, and historian.
Part 2 of 7
/
Part
3 of 7 /
Part 4 of 7
/
Part 5 of 7 /
Part 6 of 7 /
Part 7 of 7
*
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Basil Davidson
obituary—By Victoria Brittain—9 July 2010—Davidson [(9
November 1914 – 9 July 2010) a
British
historian, writer and
Africanist] was enthused early on by the end of British
colonialism and the prospects of pan-Africanism in the
1960s, and he wrote copiously and with warmth about newly
independent
Ghana and its leader, Kwame Nkrumah. He went to work for
a year at the University of Accra in 1964. Later he threw
himself into the reporting of the African liberation wars in
the Portuguese colonies, particularly in Angola,
Mozambique, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau. . . . In the
1980s, with most of the African liberation wars now
won—except for South Africa's— Davidson turned much of his
attention to more theoretical questions about the future of
the nation state in Africa. He remained a passionate
advocate of pan-Africanism. In 1988 he made a long and
dangerous journey into Eritrea, writing a persuasive defence
of the nationalists' right to independence from
Ethiopia, and an equally eloquent attack on the
revolutionary leader Colonel Mengistu and the regime that
had overthrown Haile Selassie.
Guardian |
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* * * *
*
Basil Davidson's "Africa Series"
Different
But Equal /
Mastering A Continent /
Caravans
of Gold /
The King and the City /
The Bible and The Gun
West Africa Before the Colonial Era: A
History to 1850
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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update 5 August 2010
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