Teaching Black Culture

One of the fastest-growing new academic specialties in U.S. universities is Negro culture. Whether prodded by militant black student groups, equally concerned white students or faculty conscience, the nation's colleges are rushing to add courses in Negro history, literature, anthropology, music and art. San Francisco State even has a course in "Black Psychology," while Colgate Rochester Divinity School this fall will begin a program of "Black Church Studies."

Negro culture as a discipline is so new that there are inevitable disagreements over precisely what should be taught and who should teach it. Some student groups insist that only a Negro can fully appreciate and convey the implications of black culture. There are not nearly enough professors--black or white--with academic specialization in the field. Partly out of practical necessity, universities generally agree that a teacher's color is irrelevant in matters of scholarship. "You don't need a Greek to teach Greek or a Communist to teach Marx," contends Rutgers Provost Richard Schlatter. Anyone with a valid claim to expertise in black studies can just about choose his campus. Brooklyn College has created a chair in Afro-American studies, offering up to $31,000 a year, but has yet to find an occupant.

Street Hoodlum. In the debate over course content, scholars agree that Negro history has been both slighted and skewed by the university. The lack of a perceptive analysis of the Negro's role in U.S. history and culture, many historians now concede, raises serious doubts about their own past techniques and insights. At the same time, universities are fighting the temptation--created by black student pressure--to romanticize the Negro past. Attempts to exaggerate the role of a Negro like Crispus Attucks, who was killed in the Boston Massacre, can be misleading. "He was just a street hoodlum who happened to get in the way of a bullet," says Notre Dame Historian James Silver, an expert on the U.S. South (Mississippi: The Closed Society).

The guideline for creating new black culture courses, says Arts and Sciences Dean John Silber of the University of Texas, must be to "avoid racism in reverse--there has to be intellectual integrity behind the move." Although Texas has fewer than 200 Negro students, a petition for a Negro history course drew 1,800 student signers. The course will be taught by Sociologist-Historian Henry Allen Bullock. He intends to examine the Negro's origin in Africa and the clashes of African and European cultures, study the impact of the slave trade on the Caribbean and the U.S. South, and trace the development of segregation in the U.S.

New Emphasis. Some colleges are meeting the demand for a new emphasis on the Negro by expanding existing African studies programs. A three-year-old Institute of African Studies at Columbia now has 43 courses, ranging from the Prehistory of Africa to Primitive Art and Problems of Modern Africa. The University of Chicago offers nine courses on Africa, from its anthropology to its sociology, in the Social Sciences Collegiate Division.

Stanford, Harvard and Yale are debating whether to offer degrees in Afro-American studies. A proposed major at Yale would require specialization in a discipline, such as history, economics or political science, then examine the approaches of several disciplines toward Negro culture in a junior-year seminar, finish with a senior-year colloquium and a major paper. The leader in promoting black culture as a separate discipline, however, has been San Francisco State. Negro Sociologist Nathan Hare, who has a doctorate from the University of Chicago, supervises 15 courses, ranging from Avant-Garde Jazz to Ancient Black History and Swahili, but considers both the range and volume inadequate.

The primary purpose of the Negro-culture courses is, of course, to convey information, clear up misconceptions, and tell it like it is--or was. This also often tends to ease racial tensions, although Michigan State Historian James Hooker sadly notes the case of one black student in his Negro-history class who disliked whites before taking the course, then "found out that Whitey had really known what he was doing to black people--so now he hates him even more." More often, though, the candid classes have a kind of "group therapy" effect, in which inner feelings surface and understanding grows.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.