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Ongoing Struggles in Black Academia
Dolan Hubbard , "The Color of Our Classroom"
Cecil Brown, "What black studies lacks"
Floyd Hayes, "Jefferson &
Political Philosophy: Notes of Encouragement to Two JHU Students"
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The Color of Our Classroom, the Color
of Our Future
Historically black colleges are key to
producing African American faculty
By Dolan Hubbard
Historically black colleges and
universities (HBCUs) constitute only 3 percent of U.S.
colleges and universities, yet they enroll 28 percent of
all African American students in higher education and
educate 40 percent of the black Americans who earn
doctorates or first professional degrees. Just fifteen
HBCUs accounted for half of the institutions that ranked
highest in graduating African Americans who obtained a
PhD in 2003–04 (http://webcaspar.nsf.gov/).
These statistics show just how important the black
colleges are for producing African American PhDs and
training black leaders. But these colleges are
struggling to survive, and the loss of HBCUs could mean
the disappearance of African American professors from
U.S. classrooms.
My own institution, Morgan State
University, consistently ranks in the top 10 percent of
the nation’s HBCUs, of which there are slightly more
than one hundred. Designated by the state of Maryland as
a public urban university, Morgan was established in
Baltimore in 1867, attained university status in 1975,
and today has 7,000 students. Its mission is to address
the needs associated with the urban community and to
educate a relatively broad segment of Baltimore’s
increasingly diverse population. Part of that mission
includes offering programs that increase the number of
minority students with graduate degrees in areas of
demonstrated need. Morgan State leads all other Maryland
campuses in the number of bachelor’s degrees awarded to
African Americans and accounts for a relatively high
percentage of the degrees received by African American
graduates in English and other key fields. Historically,
Morgan has been a national leader in educating African
Americans who subsequently receive doctoral degrees from
U.S. universities.
Imagine Freedom
Morgan State has been blessed over
the years to have had a strong coterie of faculty who
have instilled a legacy of excellence in students from
diverse backgrounds. For their students, these teachers
have made Morgan a safe harbor and a site where students
can imagine freedom. Under the tutelage of their
instructors, the sons and daughters of domestic workers,
doctors, stevedores, steelworkers, teachers, and small
business owners have become pillars of the community.
Members of this largely black faculty—most with
doctorates from the nation’s elite universities—have
helped to put their students’ experiences into
historical context, thereby enabling those who have been
two, three, or four generations removed from slavery to
understand the forces shaping their lives.
Generations of Morgan students
learned that there are no limits to the imagination and
no reason they should not pursue any line of
intellectual inquiry. Of course, much of this
intellectual inquiry is refracted through the lens of
the African experience in the New World, a lens that
sees America’s failure to live up to the promise of
august national documents such as the Declaration of
Independence and the Constitution. To teach American
history within the context of the Atlantic formation
without discussing racism would be a failure of nerve.
Minority students, particularly
African Americans, have been subject historically to
persistent prejudice and discrimination. Their
credentials, and even their humanity, have been called
into question. The nurturing environment at Morgan,
however, has encouraged students to indulge in flights
of critical fancy or, as former Morgan student Zora
Neale Hurston wrote in her 1937 novel, Their Eyes Were
Watching God, to “go to de horizon.”
In the exchanges that take place in
an HBCU classroom, students are free of the almost
incessant pressure to interpret, understand, or
represent the true nature of “the souls of black folk.”
This freedom is evident when students discuss works that
some deem racially charged, such as The Tempest,
Huckleberry Finn, Heart of Darkness, or Go Down Moses.
It is this space that HBCUs open, a space available
almost nowhere else, that allows for the wings of the
imagination to unfurl to their full breadth. It permits
the exercise of freedom, where students learn that they
have the capacity to legislate by means of the
imagination.
Too many black students’ ability to
master subject matter and imitate models of success has
been affected by limits placed on their imagination. I
was one of about a dozen black students to attend
Catawba College, a small, church-affiliated college in
Salisbury, North Carolina, during the initial phase of
integration in the late 1960s. I was the only black
student in the MA program in English at the University
of Denver in the mid-1970s, and I was one of three black
students in the PhD program at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the early 1980s. The
unifying thread, as I look back, is my loneliness in
what, at times, was an inhospitable environment.
This loneliness and the attendant
isolation that I and others like me have felt speaks to
the importance of mentoring and affirmation. (I hasten
to add that I tell my students that mentors come in all
hefts and hues). Without mentors who can jump barriers,
and without African American faculty in the system,
young African American students are much more likely to
fail. Unfortunately, those who survive this rigorous
terrain sometimes fall into the trap of believing the
hype: they say to themselves and others who come after
them that, against the odds, I made it, and so can
you—without coming to grips with a system that does not
promote their success.
As I listened to the papers of
African American students at a recent conference
organized by the Phi Upsilon Chapter of the Sigma Tau
Delta International English Honor Society, I could not
help but wonder: regardless of where they earned their
bachelor’s degrees, are African American students who
enter graduate schools, especially the most competitive
ones, encouraged to pursue their first academic love? Or
are they gently steered in the direction of post-1970s
area studies such as African American literature,
women’s studies, African diaspora literature, or
postcolonial literature and away from foundational areas
in English studies such as medieval literature,
Shakespeare, or the Romantics? Against the odds, some,
nevertheless, emerge from a PhD program and confidently
say, “Reader, I married British literature.”
Of course, academic specializations
in ethnic area studies were not available to graduate
students before the civil rights movement. Students are
now free to pursue these options. Although it is right
to applaud the opening up of these areas and the
important work that has helped to redraw the boundaries
of the academic universe, it is worth remembering that
students should be allowed the freedom to choose their
own paths. Too often, assumptions about race curb the
development of students of color and leave them without
the guidance of mentors who are sensitive to these
issues.
Social Equality
The current debate about who should
have access to higher education is framed in such way as
to presume that merit and access are mutually exclusive
principles, thereby shutting down a meaningful
discussion of access and equity. This reasoning stands
in opposition to W.E.B. Du Bois’s vision of smashing
“the color line” in a world where the black subject is
excluded from history. The weight given to merit
reflects the anxiety white Americans may feel at the
prospect of integration and the failure of America to
come to grips with the emergence of a truly
multicultural society. Exclusion is antithetical to
democracy, if by democracy we mean practicing social
equality.
Democracy demands that the academy
address the obvious underproduction of African American
PhDs. African American graduate students should be
encouraged to walk freely in all sections of the
academic garden. Freer access might just make the
difference in whether a student emerges from graduate
school with a sense of self-fulfillment instead of a
feeling of mere survivorship. More African American
graduate students should have the opportunity to
experience the joy that comes from the development of
the scholarly imagination.
But who will speak in defense of
African American students once they enter graduate
school? Will they be encouraged to pursue areas of
intellectual inquiry that match their passions? Will
they continue the weary tradition of being “firsts” in
their departments and have to overcome obstacles just to
earn their degrees, or will they be primed to direct all
their energies into becoming authorities in their
fields? We want our students to be the best they can be,
so it’s no wonder that those of us mentoring HBCU
students routinely direct them into programs that have
established track records of supporting and graduating
African American students. We steer them toward
departments that promote the success of African American
students, not those that simply send anxiety-ridden new
graduate students in the direction of the two or three
black faculty members and consider their responsibility
fulfilled.
Democratizing the academy means
opening what Du Bois called the “doors of opportunity”
and making it a receptive place for African American
students. A competitive environment and a nurturing one
need not be mutually exclusive. We must work to remove
the perception that the academy is a private preserve in
which African Americans are all too often spoken of but
rarely spoken to or with. African Americans are
frequently out of the loop in regard to meaningful
academic discourse; many of them discover upon their
arrival in the academy that they are tolerated in an
atmosphere of benign neglect. This neglect may serve to
create feelings of inadequacy and ambivalence on their
part and may prevent their departments from benefiting
from their presence. These black students can help us to
see our field anew, no matter what specialty they
choose. Their success is the success of all members of
the department as well as the university.
Black Scholars
Are we scholars who are black or
blacks who are scholars? As African American students
wrestle with this question, those outside the academy
see them as having made it, while those on the inside
sometimes perceive them as necessary but unwelcome
interlopers. The fortification that occurs in HBCUs
often helps to nourish the young scholars who take this
journey and prepares them for the times ahead when the
legitimacy of their own imaginations may be challenged.
According to the 2004 Fall Staff
Survey of the National Center for Education Statistics,
57.9 percent of the full-time faculty at HBCUs in fall
2003 were African American; only 4 percent of the
full-time faculty at all other U.S. institutions were
African American. Although some people view the nation’s
HBCUs as a pale simulacrum of their traditionally white
counterparts, they in fact contribute to a culture of
excellence and fulfill an important function.
Despite the nearly forty-year push to
integrate the academy following the death of Dr. Martin
Luther King, Jr., HBCUs remain the colleges of choice
for many of the nation’s black students. They see them
as sites where they can imagine freedom, places where
they are affirmed. Black students need to see someone
who looks like them and who can speak with authority,
and without restrictions, on the great issues that
confront the human community. White students need to
know that academic citizenship is not a property right
and that the world in which they will reach their
majority will be a mostly black and brown one.
HBCUs practice a pedagogy of success,
instilling in their students an intellectual toughness
that, in the words of a well-known spiritual, invests
them with the determination not to “let nobody turn me
’round.” The number of future PhDs HBCUs produce is
testimony to their success. Graduate departments looking
for more minority PhD recipients need look no further
than the nation’s HBCUs for the scholars who will make
it in their programs. And we can all take lessons from
HBCUs when it comes to inspiring undergraduates of color
to become the faculty members of the next decade.
Dolan Hubbard is professor
of English and chair of the Department of English and
Language Arts at Morgan State University. He teaches
courses on slave narrative, the African American novel,
and W.E.B. Du Bois. His publications include
The Sermon and the African American Literary Imagination
and
The Souls of Black Folk: One Hundred Years Later.
He is a member of the editorial board of The Collected
Works of Langston Hughes. His e-mail address is
dolan.hubbard@verizon.net.
Source:
AAUP
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* * *
What black studies lacks
Phenomenon is either a nod to our
common heritage or a rip-off
By Cecil Brown
Sunday, November 5, 2006
The problem with black studies
programs is that there are too few black professors
teaching in them.
A few weeks ago, a group of academics
met at the Oakland Marriott hotel for the annual
American Studies Association convention. These
professors taught American studies all over the world –
including in Japan, China, Russia, Europe, Africa and
the Caribbean. In addition to being recognized for
bringing more international scholars to American
studies, Emory Elliott, a professor at UC Riverside, was
chosen as president of the organization because he has a
reputation of being able to attract African American
scholars.
"I grew up in a racially mixed
neighborhood in Baltimore," he said when I talked to him
later by telephone. "I wasn't supposed to go to college.
I was known in the neighborhood as the white kid." Each
year, Elliott goes to traditional black college such as
Morehouse and Spelman, recruiting students for his
doctorate program.
At the convention, I met in the
lounge with a group of black scholars and professors:
Doug Daniels and Clyde Woods, both of UC Santa Barbara;
Rashida Braggs of Stanford University; James Miller of
George Washington University, and Werner Sollors of
Harvard, the only member of the group who is white.
Miller was having a conversation with Sollors about the
lack of black scholars at the convention, in academia,
and, even, African American studies.
"The fact of the matter is that
African American studies emerged at a historical time
when thousands and thousands of working-class blacks hit
the predominantly white institutions back in the '70s
and caused moral panic in the country," Miller said.
"There was an urgent need to accommodate to the demands
of the folks coming in."
Sollors agreed.
"When you talk about African American
studies," Miller went on, "you are not always talking
about African American scholars." He glanced at us and
laughed. "I'd say that there are more white scholars in
African American studies than there are African
Americans." He took a swig of his beer. "You can see
this as a good thing, as a sign of progress -- a sign
that the mainstream has really appropriated African
American studies as a common heritage -- or you can see
it as a rip-off!"
We all laughed. Assistant Professor
Kalenda Eaton of the University of Nebraska voted for
rip-off. She said she had attended many sessions at the
conference, but had seen only a few black presenters.
For example, when she went to the session called
"Afro/Asian Art and Activism in the 1960s and Post-60s
Era," she expected to see black participants, but
although the room was packed, there were no blacks on
the panel and only one or two in the audience. She was
disappointed.
Out of 300 sessions in three days,
about 60 were about black topics. Of the 1,300
presenters, only about 30, or 2.3 percent, were African
American.
In walking through the book display
at the conference, I saw many books published by
university presses. Many of these books had black faces
on the cover, but when I turned them over, there was
invariably the white face of the author.
I caught up with Emory Elliott at the
reception and asked about the lack of black professors
teaching in the African American studies programs across
the country. He admitted the failure of the association
to solve this problem, but he explained that there were
not enough blacks with the training to take over these
opportunities to teach African American culture.
"We were the victim of our own
success," he said. "When black professors began to come
into the university system, they were sent to American
studies, because American studies was interdisciplinary.
But when black studies became its own program, the black
professors moved out of American studies, leaving it to
white men."
That evening at a reception, I asked
Kalenda Eaton what she thought of the white scholars and
their interest in black studies. Although she has been
to many conventions where black studies is a hot issue,
Eaton said she believes that what is missing from most
white scholars is "the genuine feeling" for scholarship.
"Most of the white scholars are not
arrogant," she said, "But too many of them are.
"The most troubling thing," she said,
"is when they are surrounded by white colleagues who
give them support so that they don't have to be
accountable to any black person, or even to see one.
Whites don't openly challenge them. Whites write the
books so they don't have to pay any mind to what blacks
have to say. They don't have to be confronted by
blacks."
Although black scholars won't say it
in public, she told me, many of them say in private
conversations what they really think: that too many
white scholars are interested in black studies "because
of the opportunity."
"For the past 10 or 15 years, (black
culture) has been a hot topic," she said. You always
find whites theorizing about us, and finding us to be
fascinating."
And, despite the best efforts of
committed white professors such as Sollors and Elliott,
the problem of too few black professors in black studies
programs persists.
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* * *
Cecil Brown began his
education at A & T College, Greensboro. He has a B.A.
from Columbia University in Comparative Literature, a M.
A. in English from the University of Chicago, a Ph.D.
from U C Berkeley in Narrative, African-American
Literature, and Folklore. He is the author of
I, Stagolee, a novel,
Stagolee Shot Billy, and
Dude, Where's My Black Studies Department?
Source: San
Francisco Gate
http://www.sfgate.com
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* * *
Recent Incidents of Students in 'Blackface'
Arise in Texas and Maryland -- Students
at Texas A&M University, University of Texas
at Austin, and John Hopkins University have
recently participated in behavior that is
degrading and offensive to students of color.
Euro Web
NAACP CONDEMNS RECENT ACTS OF RACISM ON COLLEGIATE
CAMPUSES
Recent Incidents
of Students in 'Blackface' Arise in Texas and Maryland
November 28, 2006
The National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People condemns recent events on
university campuses that have exposed the problem of
continuing racism at higher learning institutions across
the country.
Students at Texas A&M University,
University of Texas at Austin, and John Hopkins
University have recently participated in behavior that
is degrading and offensive to students of color.
The behavior is reminiscent of
similar incidents at Auburn University, Stetson
University, the University of Mississippi and Oklahoma
State University in the past five years. The Association
is calling on universities across the country to adopt a
zero tolerance policy towards students that participate
in racially charged behavior or speech on campus.
"All students, regardless of their
race or ethnic background, should be able to study and
learn in environments that are free from racial attack,"
said Stefanie L. Brown, National Director of the NAACP
Youth and College Division. "These recent incidents
highlight the need to end campus racism, preserve
affirmative action policies in higher education and
desegregated public schools. A lack of diversity in the
classroom can lead to a lack of diverse ideas on campus
and poor socialization skills leading to inappropriate
behavior."
Last week a videotape was released on
the Internet website YouTube, which highlighted three
Texas A & M students portraying slave-to-master
relationships while wearing blackface make-up. All three
students have since resigned from the university, and
one student issued an apology.
At the University of Texas at Austin,
students participated in annual event known as the
"ghetto party" where they wore blackface make up and
portrayed stereotypical African American behavior.
Images from the event surfaced on the popular collegiate
website known as "The Facebook," where students can post
and make comments about pictures. Students from
University of Texas at Austin and Texas A & M University
posted comments and jokes showing their acceptance of
the photos including the usage of traditionally racist
words.
The Sigma Chi fraternity at the Johns
Hopkins University hosted a party called "Halloween in
the Hood" that drew complaints and was found to be
racially hostile. African American students also voiced
concerns about a skeleton hung from the ceiling that
many felt was a symbol of lynching. The fraternity has
been suspended and students responsible for the party
have issued apologies.
"The time has come for universities
to take a stand against any racist activities," said
Dallas S. Jones, Southwestern Region Youth and College
Field Director, which encompasses Texas. "Since these
incidents have occurred the NAACP has received reports
of similar racist conduct on these campuses. This is
simply unacceptable in the twenty-first century."
"We will launch investigations into
these incidents now because students on these campuses
feel this type of behavior has gone on far too long,"
Brown added.
In response to recent events the
NAACP Youth and College Division will introduce the
Campaign to End Campus Racism. The program will be
designed to provide students with a mechanism to report
and address racist actions by other students while
working with university administrators to develop
policies that will discourage racist behaviors. The
NAACP will kick-off the campaign in early 2007.
Founded in 1909, the NAACP is the
nation's oldest and largest civil rights organization.
Its members throughout the United States and the world
are the premier advocates for civil rights in their
communities, conducting voter mobilization and
monitoring equal opportunity in the public and private
sectors
Source:
http://www.eurweb.com/printable.cfm?id=29956
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* * *
Jefferson & Political Philosophy
Notes of Encouragement to Two JHU Students
Dear C . . .,
As are many who would read the messages sent to you, I
am outraged. I am fiercely resentful that in the year
2006, this nation continues to produce individuals and
groups who experience such a deep hatred for Black
people. Yet, I know that white supremacy and anti-Black
racism are America's longest hatreds. What is so
unsettling is that since the 1950's, each generation of
whites has sought to deny or reduce the significance of
anti-Black hatred. I recall that it was Ronald Reagan
who declared in the early 1980's that racism was over in
America.
What monumental hypocrisy! It was this hypocrisy that
allowed white supremacy and anti-Black racism to gain
greater power in the bubbling cauldron of right-wing
conservatism.
White supremacy and anti-Black racism are the set of
ideas and practices that contributed fundamentally to
the creation of the American republic.
These twin evils are deeply embedded in every aspect of
American history, culture, social relations, politics,
and institutional practices. The American project--the
first new modern nation—was built on the foundation of
annihilating wars against Native people, enslaving
captured Africans, confiscating Indian/Latino land, and
exploiting Asian labor. This was no democracy! (Please
see the attached correspondence with a former student
about Thomas Jefferson.) Whites did not ask these
peoples for their consent. These oppressed peoples did
not experience the American dream; rather, many of them
have lived in a long American nightmare.
As BSU chair, you now are forced to see not an
optimistic delusion of some hoped for America, but the
real United States of America.
However, as you face down this authoritarian specter, I
sincerely hope that you will continue to be courageous,
assertive, intelligent, and competent.
As your ancestors did, you will need to find the inner
resources necessary to confront, resist, and go beyond
white supremacy and anti-Black racism. This is the
case, even if we might agree with law professor Derrick
Bell, who has declared that white supremacy and
anti-Black racism are permanent features of the American
way.
Although I no longer am confident that education can or
will destroy white supremacy and anti-Black racism in
North America, I do suggest that we need to gain
substantial knowledge of these twin evils.
Therefore, I suggest that you and others read this
important book: Joe Feagin. 2000.
Racist America: Roots, Current
Realities, and Future Reparations. New York:
Routledge.
* * * *
*
The Heavyeight of White Supremacist
"Scholarship"
G . . .,
What
a pleasure to receive and read your message! You are
thought provoking, as always. Your comments and
questions about Thomas Jefferson encourage me to probe
my own thinking about him in the context of American
political history and the history of American political
thought.
For
me, Jefferson was/is a complex figure in American
political history. He must have been a man of
contradictions in his own time; it seems that he was
conflicted over a number of issues, especially the
problem of the enslavement of captured Africans. But he
is not alone in this matter. Many, if not most, of the
founders of the American polity were slave-owners, even
the revered George Washington (see the recent study by
Henry Wiencek,
An Imperfect God: George Washington,
His Slaves, and the Creation of America). They
were white supremacists (perhaps with the exception of
Alexander Hamilton), who set in motion a white
supremacist, slave-trading, and slave-owning political
economy—a racist and capitalist state (see Theodore
Allen,
The Invention of the White Race, 2
Vols.; David Roediger,
The Wages of Whiteness).
America's history itself is complex and complicated; it
remains largely incomplete and dominated, corrupted, and
distorted by a largely white supremacist interpretation.
Indeed, I consider American history to be "accepted
fictionalized narratives"! So it is with the received
interpretation of Thomas Jefferson.
The
slave and the slave-owner, as with the colonized and the
colonizer, see the world differently. They view social
reality from completely opposite frames of reference
(see Frantz Fanon,
The Wretched of the Earth).
Therefore, as a descendant of slaves, I cannot hold the
creators of the American way in high regard. Although
they may have founded a nation based upon lofty
political values—liberty, freedom, justice, pursuit of
happiness, popular political representation, etc.—from
the beginning, white America devalued all those values
with the practices of genocide against Native Americans
and enslaving captured Africans. Indeed, blacks were
supposed to remain slaves forever (see the US Supreme
Court's decision in Dred Scott v. Sandford
[1857]). Historically, whites have written America as a
white nation, as Toni Morrison argues in her important
little book,
Playing in the Dark. Therefore,
as a descendant of slaves, I remain intellectually and
personally opposed to the dominant interpretation of
American political history and the history of American
political thought.
Not
only did Jefferson own slaves, he fathered children with
one of his own slaves, Sally Hemings (see Annette
Gordon-Reed,
Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An
American Controversy). In the
power-domination-exploitation context of enslavement,
did she have the option of saying "no" to Jefferson?
(Could Ms. Butler have said "no" to Strom Thurman? Mrs.
Essie Mae Washington, a "black" woman, recently has
announced that late South Carolina Senator Thurman was
her father.) How are we to view these figures, those
who oppressed and exploited black people and also
fathered children with their women? Let me say it
clearly, these white men raped black women with
impunity! They and their descendants would deny this
rape, and even deny that they even fathered those
children, as the white Jefferson descendants have sought
to do for decades. These white male rapists of captured
African slaves were among America's first "deadbeat
dads"!
Jefferson's comments about black people in
Notes on
the State of Virginia are despicable. He was a son
of the western European Enlightenment, whose
philosophes were themselves white supremacists and
antiblack racists (see Emmanuel Chukwudi Eze, ed.,
Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader). They
considered nonwhites, especially blacks, to be inferior.
Europeans used religion, rationalism, technology, and
violence to declare themselves superior to all other
humans. Indeed, they relegated black people to the
subhuman category (see Charles Mills,
The Racial
Contract; Mills,
Blackness Visible: Essays on
Philosophy and Race). These were the ideas that
Thomas Jefferson and other white American elites
employed in creating American political culture.
Now,
what did the blacks have to say about their condition in
America? Why is this issue submerged under the heavy
weight of white supremacist "scholarship"? In your
American political philosophy courses, why are only a
handful of black voices heard or studied? Why are their
articulate voices silenced? White political philosophy,
like most of white political science, has sought to
ignore this voice of opposition in order to suggest that
there was no opposition! As a matter of fact, white
political science discusses the founding of America and
the creation of its constitution without any mention of
genocide against Native Americans and the enslavement of
captured Africans. Why isn't an extensive analysis of
this latter subject found in the opening chapters of
introductory political-science texts? What about free
blacks in northern colonies? Why aren't they mentioned?
Who was Crispus Attucks, and what role did he play in
the war against England in the 1770s? Why aren't these
and related subjects examined along with the Declaration
of Independence?
 |
I dare say that even in your American
political philosophy course, there might be a discussion
of 4 or 5 black political thinkers, at best. Perhaps!
At worst, most of these courses include no black voice.
Why do conventional political philosophy professors
ignore this profound voice of black opposition?
Presently, I am reading through many of the speeches
that black people gave during and after the Holocaust of
Black Enslavement.
Why aren't you reading them, too, in
your American political philosophy course? Philip Foner
and Robert J. Branham have edited the numerous speeches
of black women and men in
Lift Every Voice: African
American Oratory, 1787-1900. This book contains
925 pages; obviously, black people had something
important to say! |
* * * *
*
G . . , I admire your willingness to think outside of the
conventional confines of political-science propaganda.
The challenge is to think critically and analytically
about white political science and what it teaches.
Behind or beneath all of the "accepted fictionalized
narratives," which constitute American political history
and the history of American political thought lies some
truth about the American way. There will never be peace
in this nation until white people come to grips with
America's decadent history, its nihilist culture, of
Native American genocide and captured African
enslavement, as the founding practices of the new
nation. It is not a glorious history! White America
denies the evils of genocide, colonialism, enslavement,
and white supremacy. Hence, whites can't come to grips
with the plain truth that America is, and always has
been, a white racist society that was set in motion by,
and for the benefit of, elite and not so elite whites
(see Joe Feagin,
Racist America: Roots, Current
Realities, and Future Reparations). American
democracy is one of many illusions. If this nation is
to live up to its lofty first principles, it is time,
really past time, to think through the many veils of
American illusion.
| Floyd W. Hayes, III, Ph.D., is a senior
lecture in the Department of Political Science and Coordinator
of Programs and Undergraduate Studies in the Center for Africana
Studies at Johns Hopkins University.
His teaching and research interests focus on Black
politics and political philosophy, urban politics, and public
policy. He is the
author of numerous articles in scholarly journals and the editor
of A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies.
Presently, he is working on a book, entitled Domination
and Ressentiment: The Desperate Vision of Richard Wright. He
has an article in the recently published,
Black Power in the Belly of the Beast |
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Subconscious connection between
blacks, apes may reinforce subtle bias
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
University Park, Pa. -- Many U.S. citizens may not hold openly racist
beliefs today, but they still may subconsciously link African-Americans
with apes because people still use words and metaphors that subtly
reinforce a less-than-human bias and endorse violence against blacks,
according to a new study.
 |
"Historical racist images and books dehumanizing African-Americans in
the 19th and early 20th century relied heavily on the Negro-ape
metaphor, which was used to stereotype blacks as lazy, dim and
aggressive," said lead author
Phillip Atiba Goff, assistant professor of
psychology at Penn State. "Such dehumanization and animal imagery have
been used for centuries to justify violence against many oppressed
groups.
"The images have disappeared from popular culture and from most people's
memory," he added. "However, after completing six studies, we found
strong evidence that black-ape linkages still influence people
subconsciously and impact their judgment particularly in the case of
African-American suspects and defendants." |
The study's findings are published in the paper, "Not Yet Human:
Implicit Knowledge, Historical Dehumanization and Contemporary
Consequences," in a recent issue (February) of Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, which is published by the American Psychological
Association.
Goff and fellow researchers Jennifer Eberhardt, associate professor of
psychology at Stanford University; Matthew C. Jackson and Melissa J.
Williams, graduate students at Penn State and Berkeley, respectively,
conducted six studies of college-age students. They found that
participants - even those with no stated prejudices or knowledge of the
historical images - were quicker to associate blacks with apes than they
were to associate whites with apes.
In the first three studies, researchers subliminally flashed black or
wblackhite male faces on a screen for a fraction of a second to "prime"
the participants, who could identify blurry ape drawings much faster
after they were primed with black faces than with white faces.
The connection was made only with African-American faces; the third
study failed to find an ape association with other non-white groups,
such as Asians.
The fourth study showed that the implicit linkage can be subconscious
for participants. In the fifth study, the researchers subliminally
primed 115 white men with words associated with either apes (such as
"monkey," "chimp," "gorilla") or big cats (such as "lion," "tiger,"
"cheetah"). Apes and big cats are associated with violence and Africa.
The subjects then watched a two-minute video clip, depicting several
police officers violently beating a man of undetermined race. A photo of
either a white or a black man was shown at the beginning of the clip to
indicate who was being beaten, with a description conveying that,
although described by his family as "a loving husband and father," the
suspect had a serious criminal record and may have been high on drugs at
the time of his arrest.
The students were then asked to rate how justified the beating was.
Participants who believed the suspect was white were no more likely to
condone the beating when they were primed with either ape or big cat
words. But those who thought the suspect was black were more likely to
justify the beating if they had been primed with ape words than with big
cat words.
The sixth study showed that in hundreds of news stories from 1979 to
1999 in the Philadelphia Inquirer, African-Americans convicted of
capital crimes were about four times more likely than whites convicted
of capital crimes to be described with ape-relevant language, such as
"barbaric," "beast," "brute," "savage" and "wild."
"While the explicit images of blacks as apes have disappeared from the
U.S. media, the images still may continue in coded language," the
researchers said in the study. "Perhaps subtle metaphors that go largely
unnoticed in the media continue to have great effect - and even be
linked to life-and-death decisions."
As recently as the early 1990s, California state police euphemistically
referred to cases involving young black men as N.H.I. - No Humans
Involved, according to the study. A police officer involved in the 1991
Rodney King beating had just come from a domestic dispute with a black
couple and referred to it as "something right out of (the movie)
Gorillas in the Mist."
" If you look at some political cartoons of Condoleezza Rice, Barack
Obama and Colin Powell, you see that they are represented in ape-like
caricature," noted Goff. "It is not explicit depiction and therefore not
seen as offensive.
"But not seeing blacks as humans
leads to implicit - or subconscious - bias, leading to support of
stereotyping and other forms of discrimination again African-Americans,"
he said. "Old-fashioned prejudice involves deliberate action and
beliefs. By studying implicit knowledge and how it functions, we can
study the mechanisms in hopes of remedying dehumanization's savage
consequences."
Source: Penn
State Faculty/Staff (ALL) Newswire - 03.06.08 /
http://live.psu.edu/story/29221?nw=4
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Audio:
My Story, My Song (Featuring blues guitarist Walter Wolfman Washington)
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 |
Salvage the Bones
A Novel by Jesmyn Ward
On one level, Salvage the Bones is a simple story about a poor black family that’s about to be trashed by one of the most deadly hurricanes in U.S. history. What makes the novel so powerful, though, is the way Ward winds private passions with that menace gathering force out in the Gulf of Mexico. Without a hint of pretension, in the simple lives of these poor people living among chickens and abandoned cars, she evokes the tenacious love and desperation of classical tragedy. The force that pushes back against Katrina’s inexorable winds is the voice of Ward’s narrator, a 14-year-old girl named Esch, the only daughter among four siblings. Precocious, passionate and sensitive, she speaks almost entirely in phrases soaked in her family’s raw land. Everything here is gritty, loamy and alive, as though the very soil were animated. Her brother’s “blood smells like wet hot earth after summer rain. . . . His scalp looks like fresh turned dirt.” Her father’s hands “are like gravel,” while her own hand “slides through his grip like a wet fish,” and a handsome boy’s “muscles jabbered like chickens.” Admittedly, Ward can push so hard on this simile-obsessed style that her paragraphs risk sounding like a compost heap, but this isn’t usually just metaphor for metaphor’s sake. She conveys something fundamental about Esch’s fluid state of mind: her figurative sense of the world in which all things correspond and connect. She and her brothers live in a ramshackle house steeped in grief since their mother died giving birth to her last child. . . . What remains, what’s salvaged, is something indomitable in these tough siblings, the strength of their love, the permanence of their devotion.— WashingtonPost
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|
The New Jim Crow
Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness
By Michele Alexander
Contrary to the
rosy picture of race embodied in Barack
Obama's political success and Oprah
Winfrey's financial success, legal
scholar Alexander argues vigorously and
persuasively that [w]e have not ended
racial caste in America; we have merely
redesigned it. Jim Crow and legal racial
segregation has been replaced by mass
incarceration as a system of social
control (More African Americans are
under correctional control today... than
were enslaved in 1850). Alexander
reviews American racial history from the
colonies to the Clinton administration,
delineating its transformation into the
war on drugs. She offers an acute
analysis of the effect of this mass
incarceration upon former inmates who
will be discriminated against, legally,
for the rest of their lives, denied
employment, housing, education, and
public benefits. Most provocatively, she
reveals how both the move toward
colorblindness and affirmative action
may blur our vision of injustice: most
Americans know and don't know the truth
about mass incarceration—but her
carefully researched, deeply engaging,
and thoroughly readable book should
change that.—Publishers
Weekly |
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
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