THE BATTLE FOR BLACK STUDIES

Author(s): NATHAN HARE

Source: The Black Scholar , May 1972, Vol. 3, No. 9, BLACK BATTLES (May 1972), pp. 32-
47
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/41206380

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 THE BATTLE FOR
BLACK STUDIES

the beginning, white American educa- fail the comprehensive exam or the langu-
tion, particularly on the college level, age test, or pass all academic requirements
was highly private, restricted to the few only to fail the bar exam because of politi-
who were wealthy enough to afford it. cal beliefs or color of skin. Education lost
Those persons, as social theorist Thorstein much of its capacity for vitalizing the mind
Veblen observed in his book, The Theory and, since the end-products became more
of the Leisure Class, were characterized important than the process, eventually
by a peculiar mentality in which, owing to amounted to a routine assimilation of ap-
the necessity for displaying one's wealth, proved bodies of knowledge, a process
it was prestigious to be free from produc- which fails particularly to inspire a black
tive endeavor. Any work done could not be child of working class origin.
remunerative and preferably should be of
no significant use to anybody, let alone With the growing urbanization of the
oneself; to waste time, and to have the
1950's and 1960's, colleges emerged in-
time to waste time were symbolic of pres-
creasingly as the factories for producing
tige. Their educational enterprise, accord- the technicians needed to run an urbanized
ingly, was characterized by a "liberal arts"
society - computer types, lawyers, and
approach where students learned a little the like.
about a lot of things and a lot about no-
thing. The leisure-class syndrome and its The forces of production which eventually
led to over-urbanization and industrialization
snobbish motivations encouraged a preoc- have produced a concomitant specialization
cupation with lofty gobbledygook such as of learning, and a rise of gadgeteering, but the
footnoting. Students might be compelled to leisure-class legacy has nevertheless remained.
labor in memorizing the idiomatic expres- Neither leisure class education or special-
ized education is sufficient to transform black
sions and the verbal conjugations of dead
consciousness - or white consciousness for
languages; or, more currently, languages that matter - into a revolutionary, creative
which invariably fade from the student's instrument for dynamic change. Leisure class
memory and, while remembered, are use- education creates dilettantes; specialized educ-
less in post-graduate life. cation creates pragmatists and moral zombies
As middle class aspirants began to emu- devoid of imagination or compassion in the
exercise of their skills.1
late the leisure class, and education was
largely socialized, the principle of exclu- Burdened by the duality of racial op-
siveness was reinforced by the need to stem pression, black American education like-
the flood of recruits to professional occu-
pations. Hence a student might make A's 1. Nathan Hare, "The Challenge of a Black
Scholar," The Black Scholar, (December, 1969),
and B's in all required courses only to p. 59.
PAGE 32
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Nathan Hare, publisher of The Black Scholar, hired for a black studies program in the U.S.A.
is author of The Black Anglo-Saxons and more - and the first to be fired. He is a member of
than eighty articles in Newsweek, Negro Digest,
The National Steering Committee of The African
Saturday Review, The Times of London, Social
Liberation Day Demonstration and an honorary
Education and The Black Scholar. He is a member of the African People's Party. His forth-
graduate of Langston University and the coming book, Guidelines for Black Studies, will
Univer-
sity of Chicago, where he received the bePh.D.
published
in later this year.
sociology. Hare was the first coordinator to be

BY NATHAN HARE

wise reflected white American education's fallacies and seizing equitable power and
dilemma, most strikingly exhibited in the control at white colleges. Instead of search-
educational philosophies for which Booker ing merely for equality of education, its
T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois are premise was: 1) that there can be no
known. With his job-training approach,equality of education in a racist society;
Booker T. endeavored to create a race of 2) the type of education conceived and
skilled workers and a consolidated eco- perpetrated by the white oppressor is es-
nomic clout. DuBois' early talented-tenth sentially an education for oppression; and
3) black education must be education for
theory was basically about creating a black
liberation, or at least for change. In this
vanguard of, essentially, radical black bour-
geoisie who would become teachers/ train- respect, it was to prepare black students
ers and diffuse their skill and teach others
to become the catalysts for a black cultural
through radicalized black colleges. revolution. All courses - whether history,
literature, or mathematics - would be
Booker T. provided for the masses and
their economic plight in his thinking, but taught from a revolutionary ideology or
neglected the cultural-political theory, perspective.
and Black education would be-
the creation of a black intelligentsia. come
Du- the instrument for change.
Bois, on the other hand, directed attention
J.TS initial vehicle, black studies, was at
to the intelligentsia, and cultural-political
theoretics, but, in his early and most famous a mass movement and a mass struggle
best
approach, failed to provide sufficiently based
for on the notion that education belongs
the masses. Possibly as a consequence of to the people and the idea is to give it back
historical circumstances - the location of to them. Hence, most crucial to black
most blacks of that day in the South and studies, black education, aside from its
the intransigent mores of segregation - ideology of liberation, would be the com-
neither developed theoretics for invading munity component of its methodology. This
white colleges. was designed to wed black communities,
This was left to more recent years, when heretofore excluded, and the educational
the early advocates of ''black studies" process, to transform the black community,
sought both the collective elevation of a making it more relevant to higher educa-
people, with education of, from, and for tion, at the same time as education is made
the masses, and the training of a mass- relevant to the black community. Such edu-
minded black conscious middle class. Black cation would bring both the college to the
studies was to provide a working modelcommunity and the community to the col-
and theoretics for both black and white lege. The community and its problems
would comprise a laboratory, and there
colleges, correcting the "Negro" college's
THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972 PAGE 33

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would be apprenticeships and field work college administrators and professors led
components to every course. to a number of lively, high-level faculty
Even a course such as history might have meetings and private threats - to my
the requirement that students put on panel knowledge never carried out - to debate
discussions on black history in church base- Riesman and Jencks in public print.
ments or wherever for younger children. I do not think that the professors' hesi-
A class project could be the formation of tancy was simply a product of the fact that
a black history club, over the years organiz- most of them had never published anything
ing the black community thereby and rais- before. Rather, it is that they know, as I do,
ing black consciousness, while helping to that Riesman and Jencks were as accurate
educate black youth through course-related as outsiders could manage to be. I know
tutorial programs. The black college stu- because I was graduated from a Negro
dent's mere presence in the community college, taught for a total of seven years
could provide an otherwise unavailable at two others, and lectured at many others
role model for young black children and, across the country where I had occasion
as the student tests out his theories learned to observe the classroom behavior and en-
in the classroom via the abovementioned gage students in casual conversation. I
activities and apprenticeships where ap- had gone to teach at Howard University
plicable (say, in black politics, black eco- in 1961 and hung on for six full years -
nomics, black journalism, black theater, against the advice of friends, relatives, and
etc. ) he would gain an intensive knowledge former professori - because of a keen in-
of and commitment to the community he terest, then- unpopular, in helping to edu-
was being taught to serve after graduation. cate black students. It was my belief that
Other than their opposition to incorpor- they would become the leading black indi-
ating an ideology of liberation (particularlyviduals of the future, if not black leaders,
in scientific and technical courses) to re- and that the entire race and the world
place that of acquiescing to the status quo, would benefit from whatever they became.
administrators opposed the community
component most. They soon succeeded in
restricting black studies to culture and the Aras faith in the potential radicalization
humanities, to the study merely of black- of the Negro college, before first radicaliz-
ness. But they did not do so without run- ing the white college as a model for them,
ning into a battle with black students. soon appeared to be a bit naive. Part of
Let us now take up case studies of two the reason may be traced to the history of
of these struggles, one on a "Negro" Negro colleges and the nature of their
campus, Howard University, the other on founding and motivation. A few grew out
a white campus, San Francisco State Col- of abolitionist sentiment in the North but
lege. I have chosen these not only because quickly became favorite places for guilt-
they were among the earliest and most in- ridden white slavemasters to send away
tensive of their kind, but also because they their illegitimate offspring. Most early
are the ones I know best, having been a Negro colleges, however, were founded in
part of them firsthand. the South by the missionary movement
and religious preachers for missionary
"NEGRO" COLLEGES
work in this country ("home missions")
Some years ago two Harvard University and Africa. They had the objective, writes
social scientists, David Riesman and Chris-
Earl Conrad in The Invention of the Negro,
topher Jencks, published a devastating "not only of teaching the freedmen how to
article in the Harvard Educational Reviewread and write, but, by bringing the learn-
on the failure of the American "Negro" ing in the form of the Bible, to temper this
college. It created a furor in Negro college
teaching, perhaps to moderate the freed-
circles. The anxious reaction of Negro
man as well as free him."
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 Missionary-run colleges, for the most As Howard became "the Capstone of
part, eventually folded, or were taken over 'Negro' education," it also became an epito-
or duplicated by state governments - but me of its political docility and academic
Negro colleges, to this day, have never nothingness, groveling at the feet of out-
escaped the missionary influence. Most side ( mainly government ) expectations,
are teachers' colleges with an occasional real or imagined, and fawning upon white
school of theology attached, though Congressional appropriators. However, in
many, predictably, are called universities. an era of greater access to white colleges,
Many students insist that they are more just then emerging, and ''rising Negro ex-
properly "puniversities," and complain that pectations," this footshuffling was proving
A&M (Agriculture and Mechanical) are inadequate, in the competition for top stu-
Athletics and Music colleges; A&I (Agri- dents and professors. Faced with this pre-
culture and Industrial), Athletics and Ig- dicament, administrators merely intensified
norance; and A&T (Agriculture and Tech- their Stepnť Fetchit tactics.
nical), Athletics and Tomism. In early September 1966, then President
As idealistic white teachers and admin- James Narbit announced in the Washing-
istrators retreated, they were replaced byton Post a plan to make Howard "sixty per
"colored" personnel who quickly institutedcent white" by 1970, a plan opposed by vir-
the mores of the plantation and sought totually every student on campus. To accom-
ape the academic trivia and adolescent fan-plish this goal, the University had devised
fare of white colleges. These newcomersan ingenious program for excluding and/ or
were mainly descendants of free blacks orremoving black students while attracting
"house nigger" slaves (those who workedwhite ones. Some professors were warned
in the house instead of the field and be- by the dean's office, through departmental
came domesticated emulators of upper- chairmen instructed to "counsel" them,
class Southern white manners). They that their grade distributions for each class
longed to be accepted at all costs by white should include a minimum of six per cent
society and modeled their lives to approxi- failing marks.
mate white thinking and behavior - even At the same time, it was decided to
toward their own race - shunning associa- "raise standards" by raising the required
tion and identity with the lower class.2 score on entrance tests standardized on
children of urban middle-class white ex-
. . . instead of trying to promote a distinc-
tive set of habits and values in their students, posure. Many "culturally deprived" black
they were, by almost any standard, purveyors students would not, of course, be expected
of super-American, ultra-bourgeois prejudices to manage the new score. White students
and aspirations. Far from fighting to preserve who flunked would not need to humiliate
a separate subculture, as other ethnic colleges
did, the Negro colleges were militantly op-
themselves enrolling in a pre-college se-
posed to almost everything which made quence at Howard; hence, a proposed spe-
Negroes diffrent from whites, on the grounds cial division for students who fail the test
that it was "lower-class." would invariably be black. These "sub-
normals" would have to spend a year pre-
By the mid-1960's, the Negro bourgeoisie
paring to enter the new white Howard.
administering Negro colleges had come so
Having failed the test as individuals, their
much to resent their multiplying lower self-esteem would be further decimated,
class students they fell victim to an effort for they would be set apart as failures and
to "raise the quality" of Negro colleges by subjected to an ego-mortifying curriculum.
making them predominantly white. It was
mainly the resistance of black students
2. E. Franklin Frazier, Black Bourgeoisie, Glencoe,
which halted this travesty, as we shall see. Illinois: Free Press, 1957.
A case in point was Howard University. Thus, according to Riesman and Jencks:

THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972 PAGE 35

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 First, they were to receive a speech dalliance and administrative tyranny and
course (then already incorporated at How- mismanagement.
ard) frankly calculated to force black stu- Even where black students at Negro col-
dents to ''lose their in-group dialects," de- leges chanted "black power," it was mainly
spite the fact that President Nabrit himself a rallying cry.. Closer inspection of their
had been successful in Supreme Court pre- demands revealed divergent provocations.
sentations in a classical "Negro dialect." Howard students, who launched the fad in
Such students also were to be given a 1968 of briefly taking over administration
course in reading skills and, simultaneously, buildings finally wrangled some conces-
one in masterpieces of world literature. It sions out of their administrators. These
goes without saying that "masterpiece" concessions revolved around the following:
authors would be invariably, if not exclu- the freedom to bring liquor into the dormi-
sively, Caucasian. Still another course was tories, and the opportunity, in the case of
history of Western civilization (not world girls, to take as many as three "unexplained"
civilization, as in the case of the master- weekends. However, a cutback in the stiff
pieces). This curriculum would say to prerequisites for the then existing course in
black students, who already were failures ''Negro history" was also being "con-
as individuals, that they had no ennobling sidered." By contrast, black students at San
ancestral roots: thier kind had produced Francisco State College already had sixteen
no civilization worthy of attention, no courses in black studies! When students at
literary achievements, and indeed are Pennsylvania's Cheyney State College
guilty now of the wrong mode of speech. chased the existing administration out of
its building, they demanded a state investi-
IT J. e an while, as integration at the college gation of school policies. The students
level increased (an overwhelming majority thrown out of Louisiana's Grambling Col-
of all Tblack college students now attend lege merely wanted less emphasis on ath-
predominantly white colleges) the Negro letics and more on academics.
bourgeoisie increasingly began to send Black students on Negro campuses were
their children to white colleges. The late merely rejecting the paternalism ( some say
sociologist E. Franklin Frazier complained "maternalism" ) of their administrations
to me, as we were walking across Howard and, like the black race generally, seeking
University's campus one spring morning a new direction. They resented the fact
shortly before his death some years ago, that their colleges are fundamentally gro-
that for forty years he for one had been tesque caricatures of white colleges, and
unable to teach the Negro bourgeoisie or that they are denied any place in helping
their children anything. Frazier once wrote to determine their own destinies.
prophetically in his book, Black Bourgeoi- Because administrators extend only pup-
sie: "As the children of the Negro masses pet power even to official student govern-
have flooded the colleges, it was inevitable ment, most students disdained to take an
that thç traditional standards of morals and active part in routine campus elections.
manners would have to give way." Thus the students elected to office seldom
Thus, although the protest at Negro col- represent genuine choices of the student
leges in the 1960's sometimes took the bodies they purport to serve, and, except
form of black power cries (often exagger- for occasional sham attempts to be rele-
ated or concocted by administrators and vant to student interests, serve largely anti-
public relations officials playing to public thetical goals. Students seeking self-deter-
sentiment), the fight on Negro college mination accordingly feel impelled to take
campuses - in contrast to more national- matters into their own hands and force the
istic black tendencies on white campuses administration to serve them.
- more accurately reflected a desire to In all Negro colleges I have visited, I
escape the doldrums of Negro bourgeois found students who wanted to know, as
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one of them put it recently, how to "break have never done. Part of the blame rests
this administrative grip." At a college in as much on the professors as on the ad-
South Carolina I was kept up all night long ministrators.
convincing students who had had enough
to stay on in school so that someday, some- 1 1EGRO professors are generally character-
how, they might move into a better posi- ized by acquiescence to the administration
tion to bring about more change. and a resignation to academic .nothingness.
A college registrar, before fleeing mid- They disidentify with their work - for
year to a white university, once showed me promotions are largely social or political in
figures indicating that his college, despite nature - and do enough to just get by. To
a high flunkout rate, lost more students compensate for this condition, professors
each year who earn a "C" average and ceremonialize the most minute achieve-
above than students with less than a "C"
ments into regal grandiosity. More than
average. We could only speculate on the half a dozen "academic processions" are
fact that most major leaders of black revo-
pompously strutted through each term -
lutionary groups such as SNCC (Student Founders Day, Charters Day, Parents Day,
Nonviolent Coordinating Committee),May Day, baccalaureate ceremonies and
RAM (Revolutionary Action Movement) commencement exercises - at which white
and the Black Panthers, were above-aver-and Negro dignitaries speak or receive
age, frequently honor students, in predomi-
"honorary" degrees.
nantly black colleges or junior colleges, be-There is a very high turnover of per-
fore dropping out in disgust. I have many sonnel, dampened by the addiction to the
times watched helplessly while my best ownership of fine homes and the difficulty
students began to disdain most of their some of them experience in getting other
other classes and proceed to flunk out. jobs. "They are marginal," according to
One student at a leading Negro collegeone former Howard professor, "and seldom
finally managed to graduate, after some publish anything," although some of them
hesitancy by his professors; then, afterwill pad their "bibliographies" with "letters
making Who's Who in America that self- to the editor" and the like. Those who dare
same year, returned to his campus, where to rebel are either dismissed on some pre-
he was moved to remark that it should be text or labeled crazy or "confused."
burned down and cotton planted in its Elaborate codes of conduct, vaguely de-
place, so that at least some economic bene-
fined, are set up to keep both faculty and
fit could accrue. Instead of teaching white
students in lockstep and submission. I was
colleges, by example, the methods of acriticized by superiors, for example, when
new and genuine freedom, Negro colleges Stokely Carmichael spoke one fall to two
merely compounded the most deplorable
of my classes and, on another occasion I
errors of white college ways. was asked to indicate a "Black Muslim"
Consequently, there is an ever-wideningminister's qualification to speak on the
gulf between black students and Negro mathematics of the black man's condition.
professors. The Negro professor's gleeful It was known that the minister in question,
submission to a "melting poť* uniformityDr. Lonnie Shabazz, has a master's degree
necessarily produces in a college involun- from the Massachusetts Institute of Tech-
tarily black an institutional schizophrenia.nology and a Ph.D. from Cornell Univer-
''Under such circumstances," wrote Ries- sity in mathematics. He was for years the
man and Jencks in the Harvard Educa-head of the mathematics department at
tional Review, "the Negro colleges could Atlanta University before joining the Mus-
have maintained their self-respect only iflims. When a white Episcopalian priest
they had viewed themselves as a pre-revo-was scheduled to speak, the storefront-
lutionary holding operation, designed to sounding name of his church, "St. Philip
the Evangelist," also brought forth in-
salvage the victims of injustice." This they
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quines. I settled the problem by merely infiltrator was quietly shot near the
stating that he was white. On another campus. This, like many other provocative
occasion, the auditorium was closed down events such as scattered fires and other
in an effort to prevent Muhammad Ali from terrorism, was totally kept out of the press,
speaking on the campus. though the press, like the police, knew
Many students increasingly came to about the incidents. Also, there was almost
realize the interdependence of faculty and no involvement by the faculty. What little
student conditions. More and more of them there was included only white faculty
are growing aware of the fact that freedom members. This lessened the spread of sup-
for them is freedom for the faculty which port by students though many leaned to-
in turn will benefit them. ward change. In any case, the participation
While such sentiments are on the rise of a faculty member was a lonely one, leav-
in Negro colleges across the country, they ing him subject to the most trivial forms of
harassment.
are currently held by only a minority of
students. However, the very apathy andOne day while standing talking to my
urban sociology class about the impact of
inactivity of the student majority, bent
urbanization
mainly on hucklebucking through fraterni- on social norms, I got around
ty bazaars on the way to a bachelor's to
de-sexual norms. In order to assure the stu-
dents of my adherence to society's regula-
gree and a big-time job, will permit the
tions, I told of efforts the previous year to
militant minority to wield a disproportion-
ate impact. launch an association of virgins on the
This was the case during our struggle campus,
at but that one member grew sick
and dropped out and the other flunked out.
Howard in 1966-67. We wanted not only
I also explained that the reason Howard's
to prevent the proposed transformation of
Howard into a white university but also clocks always differed as to time of
wall
contrarily to further Slacken" Howard, day
to was because every time a virgin at
"overthrow the Negro college with whiteHoward passes a clock the clock stands
still. Within thirty minutes after that class
innards and to raise in its place a black
was over, the chairman of my department
university relevant to the black community
was calling me in excitedly to say that the
and its needs." That was not then a popu-
dean had said that a student had said that
lar orientation of black students at Negro
colleges. Thus, though we were able gen- I had said that I was the only virgin on
Howard's
erally to excite mass protest on particular
campus.
issues, the struggle mainly took the form School closed, and in the dead of early
of guerrilla propaganda and activity by asummer about twenty students and six
professors (all but one of them white) re-
small vanguard whose goals frequently con-
ceived letters of dismissal for their "black
flicted with moderate and liberal black stu-
power" activities. The courts readmitted
dent activists who then thought the van-
guard too "extreme." the students, but, though pointing out that
we were illegally dismissed (wihout a
hearing) have not acted on our case to
It was difficult to escalate to mass action, this day. Meanwhile, the student members
the most successful effort culminating in a of the Black Power Committee were im-
boycott of merely one day. Part of this was prisoned in another town in a summer
due to the absence of provocation by visible "riot-prevention" roundup of black mili-
(uniformed) police action on the campus, tants, in this case for allegedly "conspiring
all violence being executed by the rebels. to incite a riot." No bail was set until Octo-
Containment took the form of police infil- ber, leaving the student forces of the year
tration and student spies in the employ of before gravely decimated. The liberal-
the administration. At the same time, there moderate students dillydallied but did little
was not a single arrest, even after a police else. There also was no help, as promised
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the year before, from the community's The day before Christmas Eve of that
black militants, including the Washington year, 1967, I stopped by an asylum to visit
Committee for Black Power, an umbrella a former Howard professor and friend in-
group of the activists in the area of which carcerated there. He had been one of the
I was chairman. This also was to prove a deans of black literature and black thought
problem at San Francisco State College, in the days when Howard was in its hey-
where community leaders sought to contain day, sought out for guidance by a genera-
the strike by joining it; but, when they tion of black students when Howard's
were not allowed to negotiate with the es- faculty directory read like a Who's Who
tablishment in behalf of the students, Among Black Scholars. In late November
simply tucked their tails and sneaked away. someone told me how he stood in a faculty
This is one of the most crucial failures in meeting and angrily threatened, should
the black college student struggle, the lackHoward go through with a proposal to giv
of enduring community support. all this year's honorary degrees to whit
At Howard, as in the case of the previous individuals, he would write exposés to
"make Nathan Hare's seem mild." Within
year's boycott, student militants exagger-
ated the united front approach to the pointtwo weeks they compelled him to retire
of fallacy. Excessive in their search for("leave of absence" beginning the second
semester until the end of the academic
''wide participation," they turned the lead-
ership over to establishment students. Ityear and then goodby) after over thirty
was clear by then, at least to me, that the years on the faculty. In a few days he was
major reason for the Black Power Com-taken by force to St. Elizabeth's hospital.
mittee's relative strength in 1966-67 resultedComing down the corridor on the day of
from its * exclusiveness, although this my visit, he looked well for his age and in
angered many students who regardedgood health. On approaching closer he
themselves as "black militants" and had recognized me and refused to see me, stat-
reputations for constant espousals of the ing that he did not wish to see anybody
glories of blackness and revolutionary from Howard again.
rhetoric. These students, years later, could Not long after that, having been fired
still be found at that game, beating their from Howard, my attention was turned to
chests and reading and parroting Frantz the black student on the white campus. My
Fanon and Mao Tse-Tung; and it eventual- introduction took place at San Francisco
ly became apparent that they could not be State College, where I went to "coordinate"
expected to do much else. the nation's first black studies program.
This soon dissolved into deception as I dis-
Then there were the grand organizers.
covered that I had been brought there to
One night I attended a unifying meeting
appease black students. I refused the role
of the representatives of nineteen different
of a troubleshooter and tumult was not
groups, each proposing to have the cure
for Howard's ills. When I finally left the long in breaking loose. I could not and
did not try to stop the student protest. This
meeting at midnight they had not managed
too was instructive, but first a word on
to get together on anything other than the
the situation of black students on white
prohibition of campus activity by any single
member-group. Later, I learned that they
campuses in a general way.
agreed on a collective name whose acrostics
WHITE COLLEGES
formed an African word meaning "unity"
but they never did do anything else. Which On white campuses, particularly those
is what they agreed in the first place - located in small college communities,
remember? - that no member-group should black students live in social isolation (ag-
do anything. There is a united front, appar- gravated frequently by a skewed sex dis-
ently, and a united front. tribution) where their acceptance is super-

THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972 PAGE 39

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ficial even when apparent. In less exclusive grow naturally and indelibly alienated. It
colleges located in large cities, the oppor- might become more "in" to be good at
tunities for social and romantic philander- cards, for example, which only multiplies
ing are more prevalent, in both the greater the probability of failure in the academic
number of their kind on campus and a rela- arena. The black student - covertly at
tive access to the off-campus black com- first - rightfully begins to question the
munity. nature of standards impassionately dangled
This quest for meaningful social relations, above his head as obstacles to the acquisi-
coupled with discriminatory housing and tion of the stamp "qualified."
economic considerations, increases the
bl&ck student's probability of becoming a JlLarly in his educational career, the black
campus commuter. Commuting each daystudent encounters the subordinating slap
between the black community and the of white supremacy. Modes of communica-
white campus, black students experiencetion, for instance, compel him to lose his
a daily sense of discrepancy between two'In-group dialect" and imitate the snarls
contrasting, even conflicting, worlds: one and twangs of the white race. "There" be-
world whose spirit has been largely broken comes "thear," "nine," "nigh-yun;" "law,"
in the quest for the social elevation which ''lower;" and so on. Verbal facility is
the black student now holds dear; the otherfrankly presented to the black student as
world characterized by a good deal of the salient ingredient for admission to col-
minutiae which the black student recog-lege, although I know young black men
nizes as profoundly "irrelevant" to himself,with more verbal facility than I will ever
his fate, and his experience. And yet hehave who have either flunked out or drop-
knows so well that he must wade somehow ped out of school.
through this "white" milieu in search of Beyond this, the black student instinc-
ratification for the ''white rat trace" ( which tively, if only faintly, is affronted by the
is a chore for anybody). The chore is fact that foreign languages required are
simply compounded by the fact that, psy- exclusively of white European origin,
chologically and otherwise, it does not re- though Oriental languages may be offered
late so well to what is crucial to the black as électives. This, in spite of the fact that
student's life, inclining him in too many Chinese is spoken by more individuals
cases to give up. He eventually comesthan to any other language in the world and
see it as essentially "a bad set." Swahili, an African language, competes
This sense of defeatism and despairvery is favorably with German. This is just
reinforced and magnified by the models one of of the examples of white snobbishness
failure surrounding him in the black com- lurking behind the criteria of excellence
munity. On top of that, exposure to harsh which, by no means however, is entirely a
measures of discrimination, past or present, product of racism alone. White students,
provoke a feeling of suspicion out of which
it is true, are victims of the same condition,
can develop a negative definition of certain
but it is doubly alien to the experience of
phenomena which the white middle classblack students who, moreover, are bur-
employs for social acceptance, including
dened by many other unconscious assump-
not merely cultural symbols of status;tions
it of white supremacy.
might become derogatory, for example, to
Or, take the matter of cultural imperial-
be seen spending much time with books.
ism which white academic ethnocentrism
Under the prevailing college system, struc-
produces. A white anthropology professor
tured so that an individual succeeds best may think nothing of dividing African
by conforming most to middle class values,
tribes into "primitive* and "westernized,"
black students labor considerably less pre-
then pointing out that primitive tribes are
pared (than white students of suburban more characterized by the matrilineal sys-
training and experience) to cope. They tem (tracing ancestry through the mother
PAGE 40
THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972

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instead of the father) while neglecting to anthropologists get grants and trips abroad
point out that this could be a more accurate to "study."
procedure. The black student who first Black students who wail about the ab-
called my attention to this fact indicated sence of blackness in white college educa-
that "you have to take the mother's word tion accordingly are not trying to destroy
for it and sometimes she doesn't know her-
American education so much as they are
self." He swore that a boy in his Georgia
trying desperately to renovate it. Their
bayou community came home from school
compensatory response to black exclusion
one day and told his father happily that
has taken a separatist flavor, for the most
he was going to marry a girl - let us call
her Pearlie Mae. His father said: "Son, I part, on the surface; but it may seem ironic
to those who misunderstand them that, in
didn't know that you would go that far; you
can't marry Pearlie Mae; that's my daugh- the name of black nationalism, calling for
ter; she's your sister; don't tell your mam- the presence of more black students and
ma, now." The boy moped around, then professors,they actually are bringing about
broke down and told his mother what was more desegregation of white colleges than
wrong. "That's okay," his mother consoled, ever there was before.
''you can marry Pearlie Mae. Don't tell your
daddy but he ain't your father."
Sociology classes will discuss the merits Хне name of the game is the elevation of
of the Moynihan Report on the "Negro" a people by means of one important escala-
family, for instance, incognizant of the tor - college education. Separatism and
implications of Moynihan's own figures integrationism are possible approaches to
showing, for example, that for every 100 that end; they lose their effectiveness when,
nonwhite males between the ages of 25 swayed by dogmatic traces of absolutism,
and 40 in New York City there are 33 they become full ends in themselves. It will
extra females. Somebody, of necessity, must be an irony of recorded history, I have writ-
carry a greater sexual burden than right- ten elsewhere, that ''integration" was used
fully is his share, or a number of women in the second half of this century to hold
will languish via induced celibacy. At the the black race down just as segregation was
same time, the condition is being intensi- so instituted in the first half. Black students
fied by the disproportionate rates at which increasingly seem to feel that integration,
black males are dying in Vietnam, deplet- particularly in the token way in which it
ing the supply of eligible black males. This has been practiced up to now, and the
cold demographic fact will lead to family neo-tokenist manner now emerging, ele-
disorganization and high rates of adultery, vates individual members of the group but,
no matter how "moral" or "stable" (as paradoxically, in plucking many of the
social scientists say) black sexual codes strongest members from the group while
may be. failing to alter the lot of the group as a
Similarly, anthropology professors will whole, weakens the collective thrust which
subject black students to discussions on the group might otherwise muster. Increas-
family disorganization among Africans in ingly black students are turning their backs
Kenya, for example, impervious to the on the old tendency for black college
fact that much family strife is a product of graduates to escape from the black com-
the Christian missionaries' importation of munity instead of returning to help build it.
an alien monogamy which, replacing the This new mood is born of a greater aware-
existing polygamy evidently geared to the ness of the glories of their own past as a
demography and socio-economic needs of people, an image they now wish to convey
the people, displaced surplus wives (in also to others. Hence the clamor for more
order to "save" them ) and produced a good "black courses" and courses taught from a
deal of the family disorganization which black perspective.
PAGE 41
Л« HACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972

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 THE STRIKE AT SAN FRANCISCO STATE COLLEGE

the one requesting that all black students

Let us take up one such clamor, perhaps
the most important single confrontation in
wishing so be admitted in Fall, 1969.
Whites immediately envisioned hordes
campus history as of this writing, the San
Francisco State College struggle, which
of black students flooding the campus by
included a five-month "strike" and was an
the thousands. However, experience had
experiment in the seizure of power overtaught the black students the difficulty of
the educational destinies of black students.
, finding even hundreds of blacks whose de-
It all began when black students, by then sires as persons customarily excluded from
having exhausted all other avenues for the educational process and whose socio-
redress, issued publicly a set of "demands" economic circumstances would permit them
which, though "non-negotiable}" were gen- to quit work or whatever and enroll at
erally regarded as reasonable. They pre- San Francisco State College. The student
sented a comprehensive nationalist pro- rebels were merely seeking to eradicate
gram for education, a blueprint in defining the existing racist and classist criteria for
and" directing their own lives as students. admission to the college. However, the de-
The only one not publicly understood was mands spoke for themselves.

1 - That all Black Studies courses being taught through

various other departments be immediately made part of the
Black Studies Department, and that all the instructors in this
department receive full-time pay.
2 - That Dr. Nathan Hare, Chairman of the Black Studies
Department, receive a full professorship and a comparable
salary according to his qualifications.
3 - That there be a Department of Black Studies which will
grant a Bachelors Degree in Black Studies; that the Black
Studies Department, the Chairman, faculty and staff have the
sole power to hire faculty and control and determine the destiny
of its department.
4 - That all unused slots for black students from Fall 1968
under the Special Admissions Program be filled in Spring, 1969.
5 - That all black students wishing so be admitted in Fall,
1969.

6 - That twenty (20) full-time teaching positions be allo-

cated to the Department of Black Studies.
7 - That Dr. Helen Bedesem be replaced from the position
of Financial Aids Officer, and that a black person be hired to
direct it, that Third World people have the power to determine
how it will be administered.
8 - That no disciplinary action will be administered in any
way to any students, workers, teachers, or administrators during
and after the strike as a consequence of their participation in
the strike.
9 - That the California State College Trustees not be al-
lowed to dissolve the black programs on or off the San Francisco
State College campus.
10 - That George Murray maintain his teaching position on
campus for the 1968-69 academic year.

PAGE 42 THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972

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 Having observed that most student rebels more clearly and more easily ascertained.
tend to engage in symbolic or expressive Tactics, of course, are merely a variety of
behavior, black leaders at San Francisco or instance of the use of strategy.
State College sought conversely to disdain Naturally there developed conflicts over
confrontation as a major strategy (though strategy and tactics, now and again within
it included confrontation) and instead to our own black ranks (stirred often by in-
concentrate on an effort to heighten the filtrators), but also especially with our
contradictions." For by heightening the white alliés. Mass confrontation, for in-
contradictions, you prepare people for the stance, appeared to be favored by the
confrontation which must come when they white radicals who, as the majority of the
are fully sensitized, politicized, to the na- stuctentry and faculty, constituted the ma-
ture of their condition. Rushing into con- jority of the strikers, though much of their
frontations prematurely without having prominence was due to widespread black
heightened contradictions weakens the student apathy. Mass behavior is the
force of the confrontation. The theory was natural tendency of large collectivities and
that when contradictions in the system, is more suited as well to America's myth
contradictions in the status or behavior of of majority government which has been
the oppressor and the oppressed, are drama- relatively more assimilated by the white
tized, the oppressed become correspond- middle class.
ingly disaffected. For instance, when the But, as in the case of most revolutionary
Department of Health, Education and Wel- action, the strike was launched initially by
fare decreed that rebellious students would a minority of individuals who apparently
lose their grants-in-aid, that was a contra- articulated the latent needs, the powerless-
diction, a source of conflict, because it ness, the hopes, of the oppressed group at
indicated or implied that only well-to-do large. Revolution by definition is in discord
students could afford to rebel. with what most persons are accustomed to
In his speech before the Third World accept. Black revolutionaries too often wait
Liberation Front (nonwhite students) the for a majority vote before they move, and
day before the strike, Stokely Carmichael so they never do. Black students at San
cautioned the students against focusing Francisco State College generally shunned
their planned struggle on the ''specific" the politics of ultra-democracy as a guiding
instead of the "general." To do so means principle, substituting "democratic cen-
that they would fight merely to re-hire a tralism" instead. Their major strategy was
fired professor (a specific) instead of the "war of the flea," scattered guerrilla
fighting for the right to significantly deter- action which in the strike as a whole, in-
mine hiring and firing (the general which cluded some twenty bombings.
includes the specific). Thus, they would Some white professors, members of the
wind up fighting the same old battle overAmerican Federation of Teachers chapter
and over again; first, for George Murray,on the campus, wanted to restore peace
and harmony (the bourgeois liberal's
next for John Hatchett, or again, somebody
else. We must fight for the general prin-phrase for 'law and order" and all that it
ciple. But we must do more than that. We entails). They did not want, however, to
must distinguish between tactics and risk their occupational security any more
strategy as well as between tactics and than they wanted to risk bodily harm
principles. A principle is a doctrine or earlier in the struggle from student ter-
assumption, a rule or code of conduct, and ror and later from the clubs of the
we discovered that once we had internal- tactical squad police. Since .they could
readily join the tactical squad they na
ized our principles (an undying fight
against racism and for the self-determina-rally joined the students, where the r
tion of oppressed peoples, combined with was smaller and they could execute th
a policy of non-compromise), strategy was 1 d "Tarzan-to-the-rescue-we-white-folks-
о

THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972 PAGB 43

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can-solve-this-thing" white urges. They suc- granted to a particular union is usually
ceeded in jumping on a ready bandwagon used as a reward whose aim is to procure
- though this is not to say that there were conformity with the standards of behavior
not some genuinely dedicated - and when regarded as desirable by the sanctioning
the going got rough, crawled off. group - in this case the labor-establishment
lackeys of the power structure.
The bourgeoisie, it has been recorded
JLhey sought to establish immediately the throughout history, has long tended to
conventional definitions of the strike, which dampen revolutionary fervor via reform
black students had early labeled their own tactics whenever the status quo is shaken.
struggle. This meant, for instance, that These were some of the problems in trying
strikers were to ring the campus with picket to work with the white faculty's collabora-
lines throughout active campus hours, tion. They were gripped by what Robert
marching single file, five feet apart, to the Chrisman, then vice president and a black
best of their ability. Nobody was ever to catalyst within the group, has referred to
''cross the picket line" or enter the campus as the illusion of bourgeois privilege."
for any reason, even to so much as obtain
Bourgeois privilege is the idea that the man
their mail. Black students meanwhile pre- of moderate means has full sanction under
ferred the strategy of the flea (an experi-
law, has full and unequivocal civil rights, has
mental variety of guerrilla tactics based on
significance in the political fortune of his
what a small flea can do to wear down a country, has the respect and esteem of his
dog). The effect of the professors' picketfellow-man because he is living a productive
and morally righteous life, and that his voice
line was to keep students on the periphery
is heard, will be heard and shall be obeyed,
of the campus, which meant that "Allah's
when it is collective, by all the power struc-
work could not be done" inside the campustures that obtain. Such is the illusion of bour-
grounds. geois privilege - that the existence of man is
One night as I approached the campus ordered and reasonable and can be regulated
through non-aggressive and articulate discus-
with a famous black individual (who was
sion, with full respect to follow.3
one of several who from time to time
sneaked out to try to negotiate), I almostThus, as intermediaries, they were able
fell into a fistfight with an AFT picketeerto lure the black student rebels into a
who angrily forbade me to enter the cam- three-day "convocation" ( discussion and
pus. I explained my purpose to no avail debate over issues) with the white admin-
and at last remarked that I had been among istration. Until wiser heads finally broke
those who helped start the skirmish, that up this farce, it is needless to say that the
he knew damn well that I was not "break- white administrators were getting the bet-
ing the strike" by going onto campus after ter of he confrontation, carried live each
dark, then rolled my eyes at him and con- day over the local educational television
tinued on my way. station as college propaganda for the
The union-oriented AFT also set out to public.
secure conventional reformist strike gains Still, there is a challenge facing black
revolving around "stipulation of preroga-students, as indeed all black revolutionaries,
tives" and better working conditions. But, to work out their relationships with white
though they were fighting ostensibly forcollaborators, inasmuch as it is not possible
to wish white people in America and the
occupational benefits, their reference group
world away. We made some mistakes,
- the group to which they longed, even
if unconsciously, to be a part of - re-
but we learned a good deal in this
mained the college's ruling class. Their uni-
lateral clamor for "strike sanction" from the 3. Robert Chrisman, "Observations on Race and
Class at San Francisco State," Black Power and
San Francisco Labor Council was testi- Student Rebellion, ed. by James McEvoy and
Abraham Miller, Belmont, California: Wads-
mony to that fact. A labor council sanction
worth Publishing Company, 1969, p. 226.
PAGE 44
THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972

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regard via the San Francisco State College exclusively, it becomes a new form of pas-
experiment. For instance, we pondered sive resistance even when it is accomplished
over the problem of white desires to take by the exhibition of weapons never fired.
part directly and as one group in all of This is in no way to detract from the efforts
our actions. One day, when a group of of black students who have used them, as
white students came slobbering up to us, their bravado at the least is admirable, just
saying ''what can we do to help?", we told as it is not to give a pretext for apathy or
them why not take the administration build- virtual inaction by which we are currently
ing. They trotted off to the task and ran gripped. Nor is it to say that the tactic is
never useful; it is only to say that the
into the big guns and clubs of the tactical
squad which also sprayed mace into theirseizure of power to control one's life and
faces. We learned, therefore, not to trydestiny will not be accomplished at one
that tactic ourselves. stroke, and hence the folly of instant
Anyway, it is necessary to divide and strategems of any sort. The principle of
weaken the enemy at least, if not to utilize the flea is based on the fact that a flea
the help of liberal factions without our- would never deign to jump into the mouth
selves being co-opted. Hence it may be of a barking dog, to seize it, or even to bite
necessary to distinguish, as Maulana Ron it to death. The flea prefers to nibble along
Karenga has done, between an alliance ( an at his own pace, bit by bit, sometimes
association-^ further common interests) invisible to the dog, on his more remote
and a coalition (a temporary alliance of and vulnerable parts, to worry him down.
At the time of the San Francisco State
distinct parties for joint action).
College strike, it had become a widespread
fad to seize the symbols of power, to seize
JLËowever, in the choice of any strategy, or "liberate," briefly, administration build-
whether white radicals are involved or not, ings and even hold the administrators them-
it is necessary, we discovered at State, to selves as hostages. Historically, however,
consider both time and place. For example, successful revolutionaries have tended more
colleges where revolutionary action of an to seize the instruments of power - weap-
intense nature has never taken place can ons, land, wealth, tools, and the mind
utilize a bold form of confrontational tac- (which is what the fight for black studies
tics such as the Cornell students used in is all about or should be). Administrators
seizing the building with guns exhibitedthemselves seldom have the ultimate power.
some years ago. Had black students atWhile the dean or the president is being
San Francisco Státe come on openly withheld hostage, he is not able to go to the
weapons of any sort, let alone rifles andperson who would give him the authority
bullets around their shoulders, they would to implement the rebels' demands. We
undoubtedly have been shot down on sight, must in general disdain the symbols of
as past activities would have suggested topower and work toward seizing the instru-
police that the San Francisco State College ments that are used to oppress us.
students in those days had plans to use Many black students fall victim to tan-
the guns for their proper purpose. Hencegential, expressive or symbolic behavior
the limits of the confrontational tactic. such as the once popular call for a "black
We discovered that not only was it more university" at a time when they could not
manageable by oppressive forces, it is more even get a department or even a set of
ephemeral. Confrontation is based on the courses.

notion of instant victory, that picketing for At San Francisco State College,
a day, taking over a building for a month, sought to supplant much symbol
will achieve revolutionary change. This tac- and the notions of instant vic
tic is fruitful only in dramatizing one's dis- concept of protracted struggle
content where there is no other way. Used by the strategy of uncomprom
THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972 PAGE 45

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 negotiability. They might compromise, But what appears as at least a partial
they said, on tactics, but never on princi- success (despite the firings of faculty par-
ples. This added a do-or-die kind of spirit ticipants) took place on the campus itself.
to their struggle, and, though it presented By contrast, most of the consequences of
some problems of its own (hampering tim- the San Francisco Ctate College strike,
ing, in the analysis of Dr. Joe White, a hence most of its successes, occurred else-
black psychologist and then a San Fran- where and involved its impact on the cam-
cisco State dean), it nevertheless held stu- puses of the nation as a whole. In addition
dents together in the strike longer than to the 1968-69 wave of campus rebellions
otherwise would have been the case. It was in emulation of the San Francisco incident
necessary time and again to gag would-be(some of them directly initiated by San
upstart negotiators who would have dividedFrancisco State College students and facul-
the ranks between those who wanted to ty in an effort to combat the isolationism
negotiate at a given time and those who
being perpetrated by authorities and the
preferred to hang on a bit longer. press), many college administrators turned
a more attentive and receptive ear to black
CONCLUSIONS student needs in an effort to prevent holo-
causts
There were many other conclusions - on their own campuses similar to
that of San Francisco State. In any case,
both at San Francisco State and at Howard
- which have implications for students the San Francisco State struggle, the
everywhere, but they are difficult to draw. longest and most intense in college history,
For one thing, the ancient Toms at How-though not the most publicized, did help
ard are being replaced now, at least in radicalize colleges and students throughout
token degree, by a liberal black bourgeoisie.
the nation. According to the Urban Re-
search Corporation,
This new black bourgeoisie is not to be con-
fused with the Negro bourgeoisie which E. There were 292 major student protests on
Franklin Frazier described in his Black 232 college and university campuses in the
first six months of 1969.
Bourgeoisie. The group of which we speak
is a radicalized sector of the new black
Black students were involved in more than
middle class, leaning neither toward the
half of all protests.
left-wing Black Panthers nor the radical
Black recognition was the issue raised more
separatists such as the Republic of New
than any other.4
Africa.

Its ideology revolves around black occu-

The result was that white college ad-
pancy of crucial niches affecting black peo-
ministrators agreed to assist in the creation
ple. In the college situation, it is spurred
of a new black middle class via college
more recently by a dream of converting the
training - and administrators at Negro
old Negro colleges into black colleges. They
colleges soon began to ape them - but few
stress cultural atavism, while almost totally
of the mass-lumpen black students from
disdaining the politics of confrontation; few
whose ranks the major impetus of the 1969
have ever participated in any form of acti-
struggle arose are admitted now and the
vist struggle. Thus, despite their puffy
administrators have achieved both direct
tooting of ''blackness," and the concomitant
and indirect control over the political/ cul-
cover of black unity, they continue to re-
tural content of the black studies courses.
ceive strong criticism from their more revo-
Hence the question arises: if there is going
lutionary students. It is clear, then, that
to be this new black middle class, what
the Howard story has not yet ended.will Thebe its values?
developments there, in any case, are almost
certain to be reflected more or less in other
Negro colleges. 4. "Student Strikes: 1968-69," The Black Scholar,
(January-February, 1970), p. 66.
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THE BLACK SCHOLAR MAY, 1972

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 Much of this depends upon the kind of
education they receive. Black students who
would gain a relevant education must be Pre-Publication
prepared, as our case studies have shown,
to deal with administrative cunning and
deception. Typically, whenever black stu-
Announcement-..
dents call for relevant black education
(using the black studies program as a
model), a "coordinator of black studies"
is brought in to spend up to a year planning
the program and writing a proposal. Inas-
much as nobody chosen to submit a pro-
posal by the scheduled date would need
to spend that much time writing one, the
coordinator is unofficially expected to do
a lot of other things, not the least of which
is to ride herd over student rebels, to be a
troubleshooter whenever a crisis brews.
This and other subterfuge can only be
subverted through a habit and commitment
of prolonged struggle. It is necessary, black
students must realize, to help make your
own history, help shape your own destiny,
or your history and your destiny will be
shaped for you. Now is the time for all
black intelligentsia, not the least of them
black students, to rally around a prolonged
struggle to rid the world of racism and
achieve black self-determination. Black
students must help to structure a new ide- THE MOST
ology, provide models of revolutionary
zeal for others, and activate and energize COMPREHENSIVE
the black intelligentsia toward giving EXPOSITION OF
greater and stronger direction to the peo-
ple of the black captive nation in America. THE BACKGROUND,
They must prepare themselves to become
leaders, sharpen their tools and their un- THE DEVELOPMENT,
derstanding of the plight of the black race AND TRENDS OF
and the world. In so doing, black students
will again seize the revolutionary initiative BLACK STUDIES
and begin the long march of a true van-
IN THE U.S.A.
guard in the making of a revolution.
Scheduled for release Fall 1972

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