KNOWING AND HONORING NATHAN HARE: THINKING AND THUNDERING BLACK Los Angeles Sentinel, 04-30-15, p.A6 DR.

art I. On April 9, Tiamoyo and I had understanding of his message and meaning to P returned to Temple University where I us. conducted an Indaba (conversation and Dr. Hare comes into national focus counsel) with faculty, graduate and thinking and thundering Black as a professor undergraduate students in the Department of of sociology at and as Africology. In setting the context for the author of the Black Anglo-Saxons, a Sixties exchange, Dr. Molefi Asante, professor and classic, which expanded the searing criticism chair of Africology, noted that this day, April of the Black middle class by his renowned 9, was the birthday of Dr. Nathan Hare, first colleague, E. Franklin Frazier, in the Black coordinator of a Black Studies program and Bourgeoisie. In the year of the emergence of author of the first proposal for a department, , he wrote a letter to the campus and that this process was conducted in the newspaper, “The Hilltop” challenging midst of a heroic, victorious and costly Howard’s president’s desire to make Howard struggle for Dr. Hare, students, faculty, staff 70% White, and joined the students in writing and allies to inaugurate Black Studies as a a “Black Manifesto” criticizing “the negro discipline in the academy. He praised Dr. Hare college” and calling for a Black university for his intellect, initiative and continued with a relevant education. This earned Dr. struggle and we bore witness to the enduring Hare a delay in and ultimate denial of the meaning of his work and struggle. I had earlier renewal of his contract, even though the decided to write a column in his honor and faculty committee had voted unanimously to this reaffirmed my commitment to do so. renew his contract. It is a fundamental Kawaida contention As history would have it, he is invited to that there is no better way to honor models of San Francisco State College by the BSU under excellence, whether juniors, peers, elders or the leadership of Dr. Jimmy Garrett, then a ancestors than to learn the lessons of their young activist intellectual, to develop a lives, embrace and embody their principles proposal for and become the first coordinator and practice and use them to enrich and of the first Black Studies program and expand our lives and the lives of others. So it department. Here he develops some of the is with the life, thought and practice of Dr. central concepts of Black Studies, building Nathan Hare, thoughtful and thunderous voice and expanding on them over the years. and activist in the vanguard of the Black Dr. Nathan Hare is first of all concerned Studies Movement; insightful elder statesman with the content, quality and use of education in the Black Liberation Movement; esteemed in general and Black Studies in particular. He sociologist and psychologist; caring, argued that “the early advocates of Black committed husband and co-worker of Dr. Julia Studies sought both the collective elevation of Hare; and undeterred warrior for the new a people, with education of, from and for the world for which he and we still struggle. What masses, and the training of a mass-minded I want to do here, then, is draw from a variety Black conscious middle class” as well as the of his writings to engage some of the critical working class. He suggested that the early issues he raises that have continuing relevance intention of Black Studies was to “provide a in addressing some of the major concerns of working model of theoretics for both black our time, and through this, expand our and white colleges, correcting ‘negro’ colleges fallacies and seizing equitable power and KNOWING AND HONORING NATHAN HARE: THINKING AND THUNDERING BLACK Los Angeles Sentinel, 04-30-15, p.A6 DR. MAULANA KARENGA

control at white colleges”, i.e., White classic conception of the interrelated process dominant colleges and universities. of linking community and college saying Moreover, he posed three basic “Such an education would bring both the propositions which undergirded and directed college to the community and the community the Black Studies Movement: “1) that there to the college”. can be no equality of education in a racist Clearly, tied to his concern for education society; 2) the type of education conceived as a liberating process and practice, Dr. Hare and perpetuated by the White oppressor is is concerned, as , Frantz Fanon and essentially an education for oppression; and 3) others, with freeing and decolonizing the Black education must be an education for Black mind. Thus, he discusses the “slave liberation, or at least for change”. Indeed, he mentality” as a major challenge to the Black stated, “In this respect, it was to prepare Black liberation struggle and notes that escapism is a students to become the catalysts for a Black clear mark of the enslaved mentality which cultural revolution”, a key stress in Kawaida wishes to forget or ignore its oppression and philosophy. In educational practice, this would unfreedom. He says, “the greatest passion of mean that “all courses—whether history, the slave who has lost faith in the possibility literature or mathematics—would be taught of freedom is his longing to forget that he is a from a revolutionary ideology or perspective”. slave”. But he states, “the healthy slave, the In a word, “Black education would become slave who rejects his oppression, can only the instrument for change” and Black students think of the idea of his ultimate liberation; and faculty would become the catalysts and freedom stays on his mind”. vanguard of that change which by definition Moreover, in such an unhealthy state, the and design would be a radical and enslaved mentality tends to over identify with revolutionary change. the enslaver. He states that “this is sometimes He conceived and defined the Black labeled ‘identifying with the aggressor’ as Studies Movement at its best as “a mass when Jews in Nazi concentration camps would movement and a mass struggle based on the mimic the behavior of Nazi guards, even in notion that education belongs to the people their behavior towards other Jewish inmates, and the idea is to give it back to them”. Thus, and scrambled for portions of the guards’ old for him “most crucial to Black Studies, Black uniforms as patches for their own depreciated education aside from its ideology of liberation attire”. Such a mimicry also leads toward self- would be the community component of its mutilation in gross and self-destructive ways. methodology”. As he interpreted it, this thrust The need here, then, is to remember and resist “was designed to wed Black communities, forgetfulness and oppression and keep our heretofore excluded, and the educational mind and actions directed toward freedom. process, to transform the Black community, For only in this way, can we truly liberate and make it more relevant to higher education, ourselves and live the good and meaningful at the same time as education is made relevant lives we deserve. to the Black community”. Here he offers his

Dr. Maulana Karenga, Professor and Chair of Africana Studies, California State University-Long Beach; Executive Director, African American Cultural Center (Us); Creator of Kwanzaa; and author of Kwanzaa: A Celebration of Family, Community and Culture and Introduction to Black Studies, 4th Edition, www.OfficialKwanzaaWebsite.org; www.MaulanaKarenga.org.