Research
Blacks and whites both made enormous sacrifices and contributions to help build this nation. Learning this true history promotes a sense of pride and accomplishment, forging a connection to our common roots that heals and binds us together in a common cause for understanding, fairness, and equality.
Bryce-LaPorte further supports Black Studies on the basis that mutual respect for Afro-Americans must come through increased knowledge of their contributions to American culture.
However, Devlin (1970) remarks that the rewriting of American history to give the Negro his rightful place is overdue.
All youth struggle with their identities during their adolescent years. However, African Americans are faced with added social character challenges, such as having to deal with the notion that society does not think they can become high achievers. There are also significant, proven inequalities that come from being black.
Racial identity can impact the self-esteem of a child both while they are developing and throughout their lifetimes. Swanson, Cunningham, Youngblood II, and Spencer discussed the fact that children who were taught at a young age about their racial identity were less likely to feel a difference between their personal and group identity.
Since the fifteenth century, ethnocentrism (belief in the superiority of your own ethnic group), and xenophobia (extreme dislike or fear of foreigners) have characterized, constructed, and conditioned the European attitude towards African community. As such, in the spirit of Euro-centrism, the African community could not become integrated into society with equality. Euro-centric exclusivity and its continuous reach for global dominance left no place for the African race except bondage, slavery and second-class citizenship. Euro-centric doctrine does not accept Africans based on their humanitarian virtues, but instead devalues them based on the color of their skin.
Linus A. Hoskins (1992) said, “The delightful history and forward-looking advancement/contribution of African community to humanitarian traits have already been well documented to drive off the Euro-centric fable that the African continent was dark and its people backward, inferior, and uncivilized.”
The point of focus here is that mere survival forced Europeans to adopt this offensive geopolitical strategy; in other words, Europe had to formulate a reverse intellectual conflict to purport that they were exceptional and better than the Africans, who were thus inferior.
It is also important to understand that a predominant mode of imperialism or colonialism was to associate Euro-centrism (Western-centered thought) “with ingrained qualities of excellence in intelligence, beauty, and the right to rule other races. Its reverse impact on the African continent was to demean his physical subordination and color … and came to be associated with the (African’s) inherited qualities” (Magubane, 1989, p. 33). This mission was accomplished through poor education or intentional miseducation of the African community and the fabrication or distortion of his history.
As Kwame Ture (1975) once warned: “If you don’t know who you are, you would not know what your interests are.” A people without a sense of history are not well equipped to visualize and plan for their future because of an unclear and forged or falsified picture of their past. People without the knowledge of “having done” will have greater difficulty acknowledging the motivation of “can do.”
Stearns (1998) stated that history motivates and instills habits of mind that are essential for responsible public behavior, whether as a community or national leader, a petitioner, an informed voter, or a simple observer.
Harper (1977) argued that, in general, a traditional curriculum forces the black student to alienate himself and to psychologically or physically drop out of the regular school curriculum, thus many times seeking to satisfy his needs in unhealthy ways that can victimize himself and others.
Baruti Kafele, a teacher, principal, motivational speaker, and best-selling author, contends that if low-achieving students are to succeed in school, they need the support of their educators. Students’ success is more likely when educators are aware of black history and culture, including the history of the race in America, as well as students’ individual experiences.
Accurate history is something that is important for all people to know and learn. History can be told to people in distorted ways, leaving out African American contributions and heritage.
The executive board of American Historians speaks about how history matters because as students “learn the history of their country, the principles on which its foundation was laid, the performance of its government, the origins of our freedoms, and how we have responded to past threats from abroad…it teaches them to be citizens, to understand their world, and to comprehend America’s relationships to other nations” (oah.org, 2004).
When African American students miss out on their identity based on their understanding of their history and their future, they miss out on knowing and understanding what it is like to be an American. The students that are unaware of their past can’t benefit from the knowledge of their heritage and what connects them to their country.
Maureen Costello, Teaching Tolerance director at the Southern Poverty Law Center, shares that 90% of teacher report feeling comfortable teaching the material, however, the reason it hasn’t been integrated is because the United State hasn’t fully dealt with its racial past (Jason Fuller, “How to Teach Black History”, 2019)
Multicultural education provides students with opportunities to learn about their history. These opportunities help to make learning relevant for all students and instill students of color with a positive cultural identity (Moore, Ford, & Ford, 2005).
As such, Black Studies serve three major functions: (1) Corrective – the distortions and fallacies surrounding and projected against blacks for elitist and racial and cultural supremacist purposes are countered with factual knowledge and critical historical interpretation; (2) Descriptive – the past and present events that constitute the black experience are accurately documented; and (3) Prescriptive – concepts, theories, programs, and movements toward the alleviation or resolution of group problems faced by blacks are generated and promoted.
This furthers the democratic principles of social justice because it uses critical pedagogy as an underlying philosophy and focuses on knowledge, reflection, and action (praxis) as the basis for social change (p. 208).
(John H Stanfield II, 2016) argues that “the normality of Americans’ intolerance toward those who look and act differently is perhaps the major reason why the United States is experiencing difficulty coming of age in this post-Cold War era. Contrary to the way in which most Americans are taught to think about themselves and others, the post-Cold War period necessitates global identity. The most effective citizens in this period will be those who can understand and cross cultural boundaries with ease and who are knowledgeable of paradigms that are larger than their own local and national boundaries. However, such an extended worldview may prove difficult for most Americans to grasp because we are generally socialized to view differences through the bifocal lenses of fear and hostility, especially when it comes to populations who deviate culturally and physically from Euro-centric somatic norms.”
He continued, arguing, “What makes the history of Euro-American racism directed against people of color so brutal is that it has involved not only symbolic strikes against populations with non-white skin pigmentation but also the systematic, if not outright, degradation of non-European ethnic cultures. This has been accomplished through the exclusion or relegation of people of color to the margins of American civil and religious practices, social sciences, textbook history, literature, and other forms of print and electronic media.”
Through such mechanisms, Euro-American elites and the general public have engendered the historically specific impression that the cultures of people of color are’ inferior to’ rather than different from those of the majority white host society.(Stanfield, 1985a)
Black Studies has been, in the words of William H. McClendon, “in the forefront for developing and strengthening the intellectual, social, and political thought necessary for human liberation.” (11)
The difficulties associated with advancing Black Studies are surpassed by the need for them. To be remiss in continuing that struggle would be a catastrophe that we can ill afford, with consequences that future generations should not have to bear.
Sources
Ford, D. Y., & Moore III, J. L. (2005). This issue: Gifted education. Theory into Practice, 44(2), 77-79. Retrieved from This Issue: Gifted Education
Harper, F. D. (1977). Developing a curriculum of self-esteem for Black youth. The Journal of Negro Education, 46(2), 133-140. Accessed: 29-07-2019 23:22 UTC.
Hoskins, L. A. (1992). Eurocentrism vs. Afrocentrism. A Geopolitical linkage analysis. Journal of Black Studies, 23(2), 247-257. Accessed: 29-07-2019 23:26 UTC.
Stanfield II, J. H. (2016). Black reflective sociology: epistemology, theory, and methodology. Routledge. Retrieved from https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781315432892
Stearns, P. N. (1998). Why study history. American Historical Association, 1-7. Retrieved from http://www.mrtredinnick.com/uploads/7/2/1/5/7215292/_why_study_history.pdf
