Books by Joyce
E. King
Black
Education /
Preparing Teachers for
Cultural Diversity /
Teaching Diverse Populations
Black Mothers
to Sons: Juxtaposing African American Literature with Social
Practice.
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Black
Education
A Transformative
Research
and Action Agenda
for the New Century
Edited by Joyce E. King
Ten Vital
Principles for Black Education
Chapter 2
(excerpt)
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I
don’t want nobody to give me nothing.
Open up the door. I’ll get it myself.
Don’t
give me integration, give me true communication.
Don’t
give me sorrow, I want equal opportunity to live
tomorrow.
Give me
schools and give me better books,
So I can
read about myself and gain my truer looks.
I
don’t want nobody to give me nothing. Open up the
door. I’ll
get it myself.
We got
talents we can use on our side of town.
Let’s get our heads together
And
build it up from the ground.
—James Brown,
The Godfather of Soul [i]
Issues of power and agency, as
framed by ongoing racialized disparity, enter the
discussion.
—Brenda Dixon Gottschild (1996, xiii) |
Introduction
Chapter 2 presents examples of
transformative scholarship and empirical inquiries that
demonstrate how research can become one of the forms of struggle
for Black education. These
exemplary approaches show that intellectual freedom from
hegemony is imperative. This is the fundamental consensus
reached by the Commission on Research in Black Education that is
stated in the form of “A Declaration of Intellectual
Independence for Human Freedom.” Also the title of this
chapter, this declaration consists of Ten Vital Principles for
Black Education and Socialization and four Articles that
indicate the Commission’s concerns about both the quality of
knowledge research has produced and the effects of research
practice on the material and spiritual well-being of African
people.
Ten Vital Principles for Black Education
and Socialization
1. We exist as African people, an ethnic family. Our
perspective must be centered in that reality.
2. The priority is on the African ethnic
Family over the Individual.
Because we live in a world where expertness in alien
cultural traditions (that we also share) have gained hegemony,
our collective survival and enhancement must be our highest
priorities.
3. Some solutions to problems that we will
identify will involve differential use of three modes of
response to domination and hegemony: a) Adaptation—adopting
what is deemed useful, b) Improvisation—substituting or
improvising alternatives that are more sensitive to our culture
and c) Resistance—resisting that which is destructive and not
in the best interests of our people.
4. The “ways of knowing” provided by the
arts and humanities are often more useful in informing our
understanding of our lives and experiences and those of other
oppressed people than the knowledge and methodologies of the
sciences that have been privileged by the research establishment
despite the often distorted or circumscribed knowledge and
understanding this way of knowing produces.
5. Paradoxically, from the perspective of the education
research establishment, knowledge production is viewed as the
search for facts and (universal) truth, while the circumstances
of our social and existential condition require the search for
meaning and understanding.
6. The priority is on research validity over
“inclusion.” For research validity highest priority must be placed on
studies of: a)
African tradition (history, culture and language), b) Hegemony
(e.g., uses of schooling/socialization and incarceration), c)
Equity (funding, teacher quality, content and access to
technology) and d) Beneficial practice (at all levels of
education, from childhood to elderhood).
7. Research
informs practice and practice informs research in the production
and utilization of knowledge; therefore, context is essential in
research: a) Cultural/ historical context, b) Political/economic
context and c) Professional context, including the history of
AERA and African people
8. We require power and influence over our common destiny.
Rapid globalization of the economy and cyber-technology are
transforming teaching, learning and work itself. Therefore, we
require access to education that serves our collective
interests, including assessments that address cultural
excellence and a comprehensive approach to the interrelated
health, learning and economic needs of African people.
9. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights proclaims, and
the UNESCO World Education 2000 Report, issued in Dakar,
Senegal, affirms that “education is a fundamental human
right” and “an indispensable means for effective
participation in the societies and economies of the twenty-first
century.” [ii] We are
morally obligated to “create safe, healthy, inclusive and
equitably resourced educational environments” conducive to
excellence in learning and socialization with clearly defined
levels of achievement for all.
Such learning environments must include appropriate
curricula and teachers who are appropriately educated and
rewarded.
10. African people are not empty
vessels. We are not new to
the study of and practice of education and socialization that is
rooted in deep thought. We
will not accept a dependent status in the approach and solution
to our problems.
These vital principles are further
elaborated in the following four Articles:
Article 1:
Expanding Human Understanding
Article 2:
Nurturing Cultural Consciousness
Article 3:
Resisting Hegemony, Domination and Dispossession
Culturally
Article 4:
Using a Liberatory Cultural Orientation as an
Analytical/Pedagogical Tool.
This declaration suggests criteria or guidelines
for alternatives to establishment approaches and ameliorative
practices that have failed to alleviate the crisis in Black
education. The
chapter concludes with a discussion of the significance of the
Transformative Research and Action Agenda the Commission
submitted to the American Educational Research Association (see
Appendix A).
[i]
Shakur Afrikanus, a community scholar who resides in Harlem, New
York, assisted with the translation of James Brown's lyrics from
the Gullah dialect into Standard English.
[ii]
It is worth noting that the U.S. Constitution does not guarantee
education as a human right; see Smith, 1999 and Spring,
2001.
posted 15 July 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 |
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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
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Privatizing Education: The Neoliberal Project
Black Education and Afro-Pessimism /
The Collapse of Urban Public
Schooling / The Myth of Charter
Schools
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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
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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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The White Architects of Black Education
Ideology and Power in America, 1865-1954
By William
Watkins
William H.
Watkins is subtle in his story of the “white
architects” who developed Black education beginning
in 1865, just at the end of the Civil War. Watkins
shocks you with his “scientific racism” platform
that he explains “presented human difference as the
rational for inequality” and that it “can be
understood as an ideological and political issue”
(pg. 39). The reader senses a calm attitude about
the author as he speaks of the philanthropists,
beginning with John D. Rockefeller, Sr, who was most
concerned about “shaping the new industrial social
order” (pg. 133) than he was for providing a useful
education. “The Rockefeller group demonstrated how
gift giving could shape education and public policy”
(pg. 134). |
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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
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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
By
Basil Davidson
African Slave Trade: Precolonial History,
1450-1850
By Basil Davidson
John Henrik Clarke—A Great and Mighty Walk
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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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Sex at the Margins
Migration, Labour Markets and the Rescue Industry
By Laura María Agustín
This book explodes several myths: that selling sex is completely different from any other kind of work, that migrants who sell sex are passive victims and that the multitude of people out to save them are without self-interest. Laura Agustín makes a passionate case against these stereotypes, arguing that the label 'trafficked' does not accurately describe migrants' lives and that the 'rescue industry' serves to disempower them. Based on extensive research amongst both migrants who sell sex and social helpers, Sex at the Margins provides a radically different analysis. Frequently, says Agustin, migrants make rational choices to travel and work in the sex industry, and although they are treated like a marginalised group they form part of the dynamic global economy. Both powerful and controversial, this book is essential reading for all those who want to understand the increasingly important relationship between sex markets, migration and the desire for social justice. "Sex at the Margins rips apart distinctions between migrants, service work and sexual labour and reveals the utter complexity of the contemporary sex industry. This book is set to be a trailblazer in the study of sexuality."—Lisa Adkins, University of London |
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update 5 August 2010
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