Controversial Blackness: The Historical Development & Future Trajectory of African

Martha Biondi

The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States has prompted some observers to assert that the nation has overcome its of white supremacy and moved into a “post-racial” era, making continued attention to race and rac- ism passé and unnecessary. Radio and television host Tavis Smiley posed this provocation to his guests in a 2009 radio special on the fortieth an- niversary of African American studies in Ameri- can colleges and universities. He asked, is African American studies still necessary in the age of Oba- ma? Eddie Glaude, Elizabeth Alexander, Greg Carr, and Tricia Rose–chairs of African Ameri- can studies departments at, respectively, Prince- ton University, Yale University, Howard Univer- sity, and Brown University1–each articulated important themes in the intellectual tradition of African American studies. Thus, their discus- sion is a useful lens through which to explore key themes in the historical development and MARTHA BIONDI is an Associate Professor of African American future trajectory of the ½eld. Studies and History at Northwest- Eddie Glaude and Greg Carr captured two truths ern University. Her publications about the history of African American studies. include To Stand and Fight: The Glaude noted its origin in black student activism Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar of the 1960s. The upsurge of campus activism in New York City (2003) and “The 1968 and 1969 was a critical component of the Rise of the Reparations Move- broader black freedom struggle. In contrast to the ment,” Radical History Review (2003). Her newest book, The media-driven notion that Black Power was merely Black Revolution on Campus, is a slogan lacking concrete application, black col- forthcoming from the Univer- lege students successfully turned the concept into sity of California Press. a genuine social movement. On some campuses,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 the students emphasized the black col- ars who wrote pioneering studies of Martha lege graduate’s responsibility to serve black life, namely, giants such as intel- Biondi black communities. They saw black lectual leader W.E.B. Du Bois, political studies as a means of generating leaders scientist Ralph Bunche, sociologist E. for, and sharing intellectual resources Franklin Frazier, and philosopher and with, neighboring black communities. educator Alain Locke. This intellectual Even more, they envisioned black stud- tradition is at the heart of the black stud- ies as a means of training black students ies project. Moreover, Carter G. Wood- to one day return to, and help enact the son’s Association for the Study of Afri- self-determination of, their communi- can American Life and History, founded ties. But the black student movement in 1915, exempli½es the long history and also aimed to affect campus politics. autonomy of Africana intellectual life. On most campuses, the push for curricu- lar transformation–alongside the ½ghts Still, this genealogy is contradictory for open admissions, af½rmative action, and complex. A tidal wave of protest black cultural centers, and black faculty, swept through hbcus in the 1960s and coaches, and advisers–was part of an in- 1970s. The outcry was inspired by a tentional effort to rede½ne the terms of range of student grievances, most no- integration: away from assimilation into tably, criticism of white ½nancial and a Eurocentric institution and toward the administrative control, excessive regula- restructuring of that institution and its tion of student life, excessive discipline, mission. Students won many victories inferior facilities and faculty, and out- and launched major changes in campus moded or Eurocentric curricula. “With- culture, opportunity structures, and in- out question, the Black Power-Black tellectual production, notwithstanding Consciousness movement has been felt continued resistance and challenges. in the South,” wrote political scientist Greg Carr offers a more critical inter- and activist Charles Hamilton, formerly pretation of this history. African Ameri- a professor at Tuskegee Institute (now can studies, he notes, was “a concession” University); its biggest manifestation that began as “crisis management.”2 was the quest for a “Black University,”3 Today, it bears remembering that in 1969, he said. Hamilton ½rst articulated the the majority of white academics and ad- concept of a black university in a 1967 ministrators doubted the scholarly grav- speech on “The Place of the Black Col- itas of African American studies and lege in the Human Rights Struggle.” viewed black studies as a means to ap- He called on black colleges to reject the pease student discontent. African Amer- white middle-class character imposed ican studies began its modern career in on them by white funders and to re- a context of insurgency and turmoil, and de½ne their missions to provide great- its advocates continually had to ½ght for er aid and assistance to black communi- resources and support. Carr argues that ties. Later published in the Digest, the real history of African American stud- Hamilton’s article spawned a yearly tra- ies, as a serious, respected endeavor, lies dition of devoting an entire issue of the in historically black colleges and univer- Negro Digest (later the Black World) to the sities (hbcus) and other black-controlled idea of a black university. spaces, such as Atlanta’s Institute of the According to Hamilton, the mission of Black World, an activist think tank of the the black university was to develop a dis- 1970s. Indeed, hbcus employed the schol- tinctive black ethos; to prepare students

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 The to help solve problems in poor black com- which emphasized the existence of Afro- Historical munities; and to offer a new curriculum, Americans as a body separate from the Development & Future one that was relevant to contemporary rest of America.” As a result, “studies of Trajectory needs but that also required a course in Afro-American history, literature, sociol- of African American ancient African civilizations. “I am talk- ogy, economics, and politics were stuffed Studies ing modernization,” Hamilton asserted. into the traditional surveys, which were “I propose a black college that would already so overcrowded that important deliberately strive to inculcate a sense of materials must be omitted.” He felt that racial pride and anger and concern in its “integrated surveys” were necessary but students.” The ideas in his essay illus- insuf½cient “to provide Afro-Americans trate the emerging view that the black with the necessary understanding of intelligentsia was a relatively untapped their culture.”5 and potentially radical leadership re- Indeed, in 1968, several members source for the black liberation move- of Howard’s board of trustees “were ment. “We need,” Hamilton declared, shocked that courses in Black history, “militant leadership which the church jazz and literature were not presently is not providing, unions are not provid- offered. ‘We had many of these things ing and liberal groups are not providing. in the 1930s’ commented one member.”6 . . . I propose a black college that would be Students there had taken over a build- a felt, dominant force in the community ing to press for a department of Afri- in which it exists. A college which would can American studies. They pressured use its accumulated intellectual knowl- Howard to identify itself as a black uni- edge and economic resources to bring versity and adopt an explicit mission about desired changes in race relations of serving local black communities. in the community.” It would dispense Black nationalist thought and action with “irrelevant PhDs,” he wrote, and in this period were also directed toward “recruit freedom ½ghters and graduate transforming black education on white freedom ½ghters.”4 campuses. Much of the impetus to de- Given that schools such as Howard velop black studies came from exposure and the Atlanta University Center had to the freedom schools of the Southern been home to pioneers in black scholar- (and Northern) civil rights movement. ship, what provoked the charge of Euro- Activists had come to view the entire centrism? Darwin T. Turner, dean of the nation’s educational system as a contest- graduate school at North Carolina Agri- ed and profoundly signi½cant space: a cultural and Technical State University, means of racial domination, on the one argued that the academic turn away from hand, or a path to black empowerment blackness emerged from the optimism on the other. Thus, as Greg Carr sug- spawned by early legal decisions support- gests, administrators may have viewed ing desegregation, the defeat of Fascism, the introduction of black studies courses and postwar affluence. Political repres- as “crisis management,” but for students, sion, too, most likely was a factor. “The the turn toward black studies reflected a tendency for black educators to neglect genuine development in their approach materials related to Afro-American her- to advancing the cause of black liberation. itage intensi½ed, I believe, during the Strikingly, this huge achievement of early 1950s,” Turner wrote. The many the black power movement immediately “indications of opening doors persuaded faced a crisis. With the students gone, many blacks to discourage any education who would design and develop this new,

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 and quite extensive, national black stud- leading scholars, trains graduate students, Martha ies infrastructure? In 1970, less than 1 per- and produces influential research, even Biondi cent of those with a Ph.D. in the United though faculty still face occasions when States were black, and most of these schol- they must explain or defend its existence. ars were over age ½fty-½ve.7 In a further dilemma, quite a few traditionally trained The black studies movement has been specialists in African American subjects marked by intense debates over its aca- initially opposed the creation of African demic character. During and after the American studies as an autonomous unit, years of its emergence, black studies was or were reluctant to risk their careers on an criticized, internally and externally, on untested experiment. Many young black two interrelated grounds: that it lacked scholars probably questioned whether curricular coherence and that, by not black studies would even last and may having a single methodology, it failed to have viewed launching a career in the meet the de½nition of a discipline. As a ½eld as too risky. On this reluctance from result, many educators in the early black black scholars, sociologist St. Clair Drake studies movement pursued a two-pronged observed, “[T]hey want the security and quest for a standardized curriculum, on prestige of being in a traditional depart- the one hand, and an original, authorita- ment. Black Studies might be a fad, and tive methodology on the other. At the they’d be left out in the cold.”8 At times, same time, many scholars in the black non-academics ½lled faculty positions; studies movement questioned whether on occasion, immigrant scholars with either of these pursuits was desirable or little connection to the students’ politi- even attainable. In other words, while cal vision ½lled positions, generating new some scholars have insisted that African tensions and many local debates over American studies must devise its own the ½eld’s responsibility and mission. unique research methodology, others A view quickly took root among many contend that as a multidiscipline, or elite academics that creating African interdisciplinary discipline, its strength American studies programs was smarter lies in incorporating multiple, diverse than creating departments: the former, methodologies. In a similar vein, while by being formally af½liated with other some have argued for a standardized departments, stood a better chance of curriculum, others argue that higher attracting top scholars. Yet for all the education is better served by dynamism scorn/neglect/resistance heaped on them, and innovation. I argue that the disci- departments have de½ed the recurring pline’s ultimate acceptance in academe predictions of their demise. Most stu- (to the extent that it has gained accep- dent-founders preferred departmental tance) has come from the production of status, owing to the department’s greater influential scholarship and research and status and independence or, as the stu- the development of new conceptual ap- dents would have put it, its autonomy proaches that have influenced other dis- and control. The more recent develop- ciplines. Pioneering scholarship and in- ment of doctoral programs in African fluential intellectual innovations, rather American studies has relied on depart- than standardized pedagogy or method- mental structures, even inducing Yale ology, have been the route to influence to convert its program–once held up as in American intellectual life. the national exemplar–to a department. A tension between authority and free- Today, African American studies attracts dom animates these debates. As late as

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 The 2000, an article in The Chronicle of Higher “burst full-blown upon the academic Historical Education reinforced the idea that multi- scene a generation ago.” He envisions Development & Future ple perspectives and methodologies had a “grand theory” that would unify the Trajectory retarded the progress of African Amer- views of black nationalists and “inclu- of African American ican studies. The author of an essay on sionists” as well as bene½t from the in- Studies the state of the ½eld criticized the diverse sights of while moving character of African American studies beyond its ethnocentrism.11 courses at different universities: “The Scholars and teachers influenced by Ohio State class is chronological with a Afrocentricity have been among the most literary bent,” she wrote. “Duke’s take: consistent advocates of the need to cre- . The Penn course ½lters ate a distinctive methodology. For Tem- everything through a W.E.B. Du Bois ple University scholar Mole½ Asante, lens, and N.Y.U. combines pan-African- Afrocentricity “is the only way you can ism with urban studies.” Of course, this approach African American Studies” sampling reflects the range one would because it puts ancient African knowl- ½nd in the departments of history, soci- edge systems at the center of analysis.12 ology, or English at these same univer- For Greg Carr of Howard University, the sities. But the author stresses disarray. challenge is to draw on “deep Africana “There’s a reason 30 years after the disci- thought,” the traditions of “classical and pline developed that people still wonder medieval ,” for guidance in enact- whether the black-studies curriculum ing positive social change for African represents a coherent subject or a smor- descendants. A key mission of African gasbord,” she concludes. In this view, American studies, he believes, should the discipline’s strengths–“eclectic, be to reconnect “narratives of African expansive, experimental curricula”– identity to the contemporary era.” His are also its weaknesses.9 department taps “into the long genealo- James B. Stewart, a former president gy of Africana experiences” in order to of the National Council of Black Studies, assess how to improve the world. Carr shares this anxiety about disarray. In his distinguishes this mission from the mis- view, “We do everything–the diaspora, sion of African American studies on sex, history, language, economics, race.” other campuses. “We’re not trying to Yet he seems oblivious to the fact that explain blackness for ” or each of these areas has been vital terrain looking at “our contributions to Amer- for research innovation. “We don’t have ican society.” Rather, the approach at a ,” he laments. “That is why Howard is “an extension of the long arc we don’t make progress.” If achieving of Africana intellectual work.”13 The this uni½ed paradigm is the measure of inclination to look for insights in the progress, then Stewart, judging forty precolonial African past, rejecting Euro- years of African American studies, sees pean modernity and thereby hoping to none. Longtime black studies educator escape or resolve the legacies of colonial- Abdul Alkalimat echoes Stewart’s view ism and enslavement, is fundamental to that “standardization means the disci- the approach that leading architects of pline exists.”10 Arthur Lewin, a profes- Afrocentricity have taken. Indeed, for sor of black and Hispanic studies at Ron Karenga, author of an early black Baruch College, agrees that black stud- studies textbook and the founder of ies lacks “a coherently stated rationale,” Kwanzaa, “the fundamental point of a consequence, in his view, of having departure for African American Studies

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 or Black Studies is an ongoing dialogue ican Studies.” Moreover, Hayes believes Martha with African culture. That is, continuous- it is important to cultivate “a more flexi- Biondi ly asking it questions and seeking from it ble and innovative atmosphere” so that answers to the fundamental questions of “African American Studies can continue humankind.”14 to grow and develop.”18 Whether proponents of Afrocentricity Scholars have endeavored to move be- or a different approach, most scholars in yond the notion that African American African American studies reject the effort studies was merely “additive knowledge” to impose a single methodology, seeing by emphasizing that it constitutes a pro- it as unrealistic and stifling. Rhett Jones, found critique of the major disciplines cofounder and longtime chair of the de- and seeks to transform intellectual life partment of at Brown generally in the Western academy. For University, was an early critic of the “one Eddie Glaude, African American stud- size ½ts all” approach to the discipline. ies is about “pushing the boundaries of “In its early years, Black studies wasted knowledge production” and influenc- considerable human, intellectual, and ing ½elds of study across the university. material resources in battles over ½nding African American studies at its best, in the master plan for the study of Black Glaude’s view, is “challenging the ways people,” he argues. Similarly, he feels we know the world.” Elizabeth Alexan- that “much energy was also wasted on der shares this emphasis on humanistic responding to the charge by America’s transformation and regards African Eurocentric, racist disciplines that Black American studies as an essential compo- Studies had no methodology of its own. nent of “being fully educated.” Tricia Neither did the Eurocentrists. And they Rose’s approach to the question of the still don’t.” He points out, “Historians ½eld’s focus is in many respects exem- are no more agreed on methodology or plary of dominant trends. She expresses theory than are anthropologists . . . soci- agreement with Greg Carr that an im- ologists or philosophers.”15 In contrast portant African intellectual tradition to those who see pluralism in black stud- preceded European colonial contact, but ies as a weakness, Jones believes that this in her view, scholars must confront the element was crucial to the development transformations wrought by processes of and staying power of the ½eld. Plural- enslavement and . “We are in ism was “a credit to black studies,” he the west, in the so-called New World,” observes, as “its founders realized there she contends, and should “examine the could be no master plan as to how the dis- circumstances we are in, examine the cipline should serve black Americans.”16 hybridities that have emerged from it.”19 Historian Francille Rusan Wilson simi- larly resists the effort to impose a single The early black studies movement co- approach. “There’s not one way to be incided with major anticolonial strug- black or to study ,” she as- gles in Angola, Mozambique, and Guin- serts. “The discipline is quite alive,” in ea-Bissau; struggles against white settler her view, “and the differences indicate regimes in southern Africa; and a widen- that.”17 Political scientist Floyd Hayes ing African solidarity movement among concurs, stating, “One must ask whether black American radicals. According to there should be conformity to a model (pioneering scholar of the African dias- curriculum and a single theoretical or pora) St. Clair Drake, “[T]he country ideological orientation in African Amer- was deeply mired in the Vietnam War

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 The but many black youth were much more tics were explored more within the con- Historical interested in how the war against Portu- text of the colonial powers than with any Development & Future gal was going in Mozambique, Angola attention to African cultural continuities Trajectory and Guinea-Bissau than in the war in in the Western hemisphere.” Black Amer- of African American Vietnam.” In his view, it was critical to ican intellectuals had long resisted this Studies understand that the “modern Black Studies “compartmentalization of knowledge movement emerged within this international about Black people.”22 context.”20 Still, a global consciousness Administrators initially sought to lim- in black studies was not simply a prod- it the scope of African American studies uct of postwar solidarity struggles. It has to the United States, but early efforts to shaped black historical writing ever since include Africa as well as the diaspora in its origins in the nineteenth century. Black black studies departments and profes- has been both invested in sional organizations ultimately bore rewriting the Western distortion of Afri- fruit. After four decades, it has become can peoples and societies and keenly in- increasingly common to encounter de- terested in erecting a powerful counter- partments of African and African Amer- discourse to the statelessness, dispersal, ican studies or departments of Africana subjugation, and dehumanization of Afri- studies, which explicitly take Africa, the cans in diaspora. W.E.B. Du Bois is most United States, the Caribbean, and Latin famously associated with this effort, but America as their subject. Campuses as its practitioners are numerous.21 diverse as the University of Illinois, Dart- Although the black studies movement mouth College, the University of Min- is thought of as resolutely U.S.-based, nesota, Duke University, Harvard Uni- many of its early scholars tried to per- versity, Pennsylvania State University, suade universities and funders to connect the University of Kansas, Stanford Uni- formally the study of continental Africa, versity, the University of Texas, and Ari- the Caribbean, and the United States. zona State University join together Afri- There was widespread agreement that the can and African American studies. Of typical American curriculum had “ignored course, the limitations of budgets and the African heritage of , faculty size may interfere with fully real- characterizing them as having begun their izing the promise of interdisciplinary, existence in North America as a tabula truly global coverage. But the crucial rasa–blank slates to be imprinted with point is that the black studies movement Euro-American Culture.” This was a dif- ultimately achieved a degree of success ½cult battle in part because African stud- in undoing the colonialist compartmen- ies had been programmatically estab- talization of research and knowledge lished after World War II as a result of that had insisted on severing African Cold War pressures to develop knowl- studies from African American studies. edge about an area of the world that the United States viewed as part of Soviet At various junctures in its forty-year strategic designs. These programs, in the history, African American studies has words of scholar Robert L. Harris, “had been steeped in a discourse of crisis. In no real link to Black people in the New the 1970s, many of the discipline’s units World.” African studies “became wed- were marked by declining course enroll- ded to a modernization theory that mea- ments, budget cuts, part-time faculty, sured African societies by Western stan- and continued questioning of their legit- dards. African history, culture and poli- imacy and scholarly rigor. The rise of

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 black women’s studies in the 1980s pro- has been most visible in curricula that Martha vided an extremely signi½cant counter- seek to join and engage traditions of so- Biondi weight to these trends and proved criti- cial resistance and critique. Individuals cal to re-visioning the ½eld. An outpour- such as sociologist and radio host Michael ing of scholarship and literature by and Eric Dyson and scholar and civil rights about black women helped revitalize activist Cornel West make such inter- African American studies–and raise its ventions to a mass media audience, but stature. In many respects, this develop- more typical are the less well-known ment is ironic, given the patriarchal char- black studies scholars and teachers who acter of the early black studies movement. are activists in their local communities Male scholars dominated leadership of on issues ranging from immigration to the ½eld and often resisted research and health care, employment, education, and pedagogy on gender and sexuality, cast- housing. Black studies, along with other ing these topics as beyond the boundaries interdisciplinary ½elds, has created lead- of black studies. But as historian Darlene ers in producing scholarship and engag- Clark Hine noted in 1990, after summa- ing in critical social analysis on issues rizing a body of pioneering black femi- ranging from the rise of neoliberalism nist scholarship, “[T]he study of black to the development of the United States women is the current frontier in black as a mass prison society with all its atten- studies.”23 In more recent years, the rise dant social, economic, cultural, and po- of black queer studies has further pushed litical implications.25 African American studies to confront the homophobic and hetero-normative Returning to Tavis Smiley’s question: assumptions that shaped early pedagogy what is the role of African American stud- and scholarship in the ½eld. According ies in the age of Obama? Princeton’s to Tricia Rose, on the discipline’s fortieth Eddie Glaude argues that African Ameri- anniversary, “[G]ender, class and sex- can studies teaches “the skills to under- uality are more and more a part of the stand race and ,” which in many ½eld.”24 The study of intraracial divisions respects is more urgent than ever as we –along various axes–has assumed a face a post-racial discourse that refuses prominent place in African American to acknowledge racism and racists. As studies. Elizabeth Alexander puts it, the goal is Yet in this era of escalating income in- not to be post-racial, but post-racist. Tri- equality, mass incarceration, permanent cia Rose believes the independent mis- unemployment, and global economic sion of African American studies remains restructuring, many African American essential because “most academic knowl- studies programs and/or scholars main- edge in the west has not been race neu- tain a commitment to using scholarship tral.” The disciplines came “into forma- and the resources of the academy to ad- tion inside ideological moments when dress the multiple crises facing black com- white supremacy was profoundly dom- munities. Social conditions are dire for inant,” and this formation is relatively large segments of the African American recent.26 But has the mission of African population, as the middle class shrinks, American studies changed in other ways? hiv/aids incidence soars, jobs disap- One change, commented on by many pear, and the number of families living longtime professors in the ½eld, concerns in poverty increases. The left-wing, or a shift in the composition of students tak- progressive, tradition in black studies ing black studies courses, from almost ex-

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 The clusively black in the early days to mul- ment was a vibrant development in both Historical tiracial in later years. Rhett Jones cites urban, working-class public institutions Development & Future student diversity as the most striking and elite research universities. This dual Trajectory difference from 1969: “In the early years presence survives, but as the incorpora- of African American our classes were almost entirely black. tion of African American studies by elite Studies Now we know we will ½nd a rainbow of institutions coincides with the defund- Latino, Asian American, white and black ing of public institutions and the sharp students in our Afro-American Studies rise in economic inequality in the United courses.”27 According to Elizabeth Alex- States, a widening chasm has formed ander, 30 percent of students at Yale are between these locations, and distanced of color. “What we do,” in African Amer- them from their shared . These ican studies, she insists, “is for all of our developments have led some commu- students.”28 This shift is widely celebrat- nity-based black studies programs or ed as a sign of the broad appeal of Afri- veterans to question the contemporary can American studies and the fact that direction of the ½eld. The rise to public a diverse group of students appreciates prominence of black studies scholars at its centrality to a well-rounded liberal Ivy League institutions likely fuels this arts education. Yet this development feeling of estrangement. Olive Harvey also illustrates the shift away from the College, a working-class public institu- original Black Nationalist intent by some tion based on the South Side of Chica- advocates of black studies–that is, to go, has been hosting an annual African halt “the mis-education of the Negro” American Studies Conference since 1977. and instill black collegians with a strong On its thirteenth anniversary, confer- racial consciousness. As the black liber- ence convener Armstead Allen expressed ation movement waned, the ambitious concern that the new wave of black stud- visions of the more radical Afro-Amer- ies proponents had strayed too far from ican studies programs also waned, or the founding mission. “From its incep- were crushed, depending on the campus. tion, black studies has sought tangible, And as employment prospects soured not just theoretical, connections to the in the 1970s, black students pursued an everyday concerns of the African-Amer- agenda in higher education more close- ican community,” he said, contending ly tied to acquiring job skills and profes- that the ½eld had moved in less relevant sional mobility. According to a business academic directions.30 major at George Washington University The relationship between African at the time, “Black students are taking American studies and Latina/o, Asian accounting instead of black history as a American, and other ethnic studies is matter of survival. They’re asking ‘what increasingly broached in this era of rap- can you do with Black Studies?’”29 idly changing demographics and new In more recent years, black students racial discourses and con½gurations. On have faced a series of obstacles in their the one hand, African American studies efforts to attend college. Forty years ago, is respected as a pioneer and looked to student activists asserted a right to edu- as a model of interdisciplinarity as well cation and not only won open admissions as institutional resourcefulness and and af½rmative action but also increased longevity. As Rhett Jones rightly notes, ½nancial aid. Many of these reforms have “Ideas about multiculturalism, plural- been repealed outright or dramatically ism, and diversity are now central ele- weakened. The early black studies move- ments in higher education because of

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 black studies’ many successes. Cynics in the United States have been Martha and conservatives predicted that Afri- targets of many forms of racial pro½ling Biondi cana studies would be a fad, but it has in the years since the attacks of Septem- instead proved to be a strong and endur- ber 11, 2001, politicizing a new Muslim ing part of higher education, shaping generation that has begun to assert itself scholarship, teaching, and service.” In on college campuses. These students are addition, “African American studies demanding a voice and place among eth- serves as the model for ethnic studies, nic studies and student-of-color organi- women’s studies, Native-American stud- zations. Will African American studies ies, Latino studies and Asian-American approach this development as an oppor- studies.”31 This modeling happened tunity to cultivate solidarity and sharpen quickly on many campuses in Califor- and update its analysis of racism in the nia, where, in the late 1960s, radicalized United States? Or will it ignore such Asian American and Mexican American concerns in favor of an exclusive focus students demanded curricular inclusion on the culture, struggles, and dilemmas and recognition, and in New York City, of African Americans? where Puerto Rican students protested Arguably the most exciting develop- alongside African Americans in the 1969 ment for African American studies in the uprisings that swept the City University twenty-½rst century is the expansion of of New York. doctoral programs. The opportunity to But the push for Latino/a, Asian Amer- train young scholars can only add to the ican, and comparative ethnic studies came growth, rigor, and institutional stature later in other parts of the country. In some of the ½eld. But ensuring the success of instances, budgetary pressures and the this development will necessitate further seeming logic of the white/non-white investments in order to enable depart- divide have induced administrators to ments to provide the additional mentor- collapse heretofore independent black ing and teaching graduate education re- studies programs into umbrella ethnic quires. After forty years, it is now clear studies units, introducing new anxieties that African American studies has been into a discipline whose resources and one of a series of new departures in the stature, to the extent that it has them, academy that have dramatically altered have come relatively recently. In any the narrow, Western-oriented curricu- event, African American studies will lum and culture of the American uni- face many challenges and dilemmas as versity. Perhaps a fuller appreciation of it adapts to a new intellectual/political/ what has been accomplished can inspire demographic landscape. For example, hope in the possibilities that lie ahead.

endnotes 1 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show, Pub- lic Radio International, original airdate September 18, 2009, http://thetavissmileyshow .com/100108_index.html. 2 Ibid. 3 Charles V. Hamilton, “They Demand Relevance: Black Students Protest, 1968–1969” (unpublished manuscript, c. 1971), 70; copy in author’s possession.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 The 4 Charles Hamilton, “The Place of the Black College in the Human Rights Struggle,” Historical Negro Digest 16 (11) (September 1967): 6–7. Development & Future 5 Darwin T. Turner, “The Center for African Afro-American Studies at North Carolina Trajectory Agricultural and Technical State University,” Journal of Negro Education 39 (3) (Summer of African 1970): 221–222. American Studies 6 The (Howard) Hilltop, April 26, 1968. 7 Nathan Huggins, Afro-American Studies: A Report to the Ford Foundation (New York: Ford Foundation, 1985), xx. 8 Steven V. Roberts, “Black Studies Aim to Change Things,” The New York Times, May 15, 1969. 9 Alison Schneider, “Black Studies 101: Introductory Courses Reflect a Field Still De½n- ing Itself,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 19, 2000. 10 Ibid. 11 Arthur Lewin, “Towards a Grand Theory of Black Studies: An Attempt to Discern the Dynamics and the Direction of the Discipline,” Western Journal of Black Studies 25 (2) (Summer 2001): 76. 12 Mary-Christine Philip, “Of Black Studies: Pondering Strategies for the Future,” Black Issues in Higher Education, December 29, 1994. 13 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show. 14 Maulana Karenga, “Black Studies: A Critical Reassessment,” Race and Reason 4 (1997– 1998): 41. 15 Rhett Jones, “Black Studies Failures and ‘First Negroes,’” Black Issues in Higher Education, October 20, 1994. 16 Rhett Jones, “The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies,” Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 6 (Winter 1994–1995): 92. 17 Schneider, “Black Studies 101.” 18 Floyd V. Hayes, “Preface to Instructors,” in Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies, ed. Floyd V. Hayes (San Diego, Calif.: Collegiate Press, 2000), xxxvi. 19 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show. 20 St. Clair Drake, “Black Studies and Global Perspectives: An Essay,” Journal of Negro Edu- cation 53 (3) (Summer 1984): 231. 21 A global focus had long characterized black history writing. See Robin Kelley, “‘But a Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950” The Journal of American History 86 (3) (1999). 22 Robert L. Harris, “The Intellectual and Institutional Development of Africana Studies,” in Black Studies in the United States: Three Essays, ed. Robert Hine, Robert L. Harris, Jr., and Nellie McKay (New York: Ford Foundation, 1990; repr., Inclusive Scholarship, 2009), 95–94. 23 Darlene Clark Hine, “Black Studies: An Overview,” in Black Studies in the United States, ed. Hine, Harris, and McKay, 23–24. 24 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show. 25 See, for example, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (New York: New Press, 2010); and David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (New York: Wiley Blackwell, 2008). 26 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia.” The Tavis Smiley Show. 27 Jones, “The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies,” 92.

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Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DAED_a_00090 by guest on 28 September 2021 28 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show. Martha Biondi 29 Art Harris, “Black Studies Enrollment Shows Dramatic Decline,” The Washington Post, November 11, 1979. 30 Salim Muwakkil, “After 20 Years, New Respect for Black Studies,” In These Times, May 16–22, 1990. 31 Jones, “The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies,” 92.

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