7/27/2019 Harold Cruse Has Black Studies Failed?

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8 IN THESE TIMES OCTOBER 3-9,1979

Continuedfrom page 7.Academiahas not been spared. Ques-

tioning liberal orthodoxy is easier nowthan even at the very peak of the politicalconfrontationsof the late '60s. Students,depicted by the Old Guard as apatheticand self-interested,are rather scaredandcynicalscared,with the prospect of de-cent jobs and secure livesdim on thehorizon, and cynical, as nonexus of via-ble alternative politicshas yet emerged.The political support for such an alter-native, however,is clearly immense.

Th e businessan d government es tab-lishment isvisiblyshaken. Therehas beena veritable floodof pro-capitalist propa-ganda channeled into our colleges bysuch corporate-finance groupsas theAmerican Enterprise Institute,who useWilliam Shattner, of Star Trek fame,topeddle their wares.

Th e general businessan d foundat ionresponse to the student movement of the'60s was to "vocationalize" higher edu-cationeliminatecritical inquiry infavorof nuts-and-bolts, job-oriented technicalskills. Faculty an d student oppositionhas hampered this strategy.Th e t remen-dous surgeof trade unionismin collegesand universities, aiding facultyan d pro-tecting theirow n "working conditions,"will make the business strategy evenmore difficult in coming years.

Don't write off higher education inthe struggle for socialism,which willlikely face us in the decade of the '80s.Th e Hallowed Hallsmay yet be acenterof progressive change.

Herb Gintis, co-author of Schooling inCapitalist America, teaches at the Univ.of Massachusetts at A mherst.

lack Collegesare in DangerMANNING MARABLE

On e of the principal "success stories"for the 1960s was the advance of blackAmericansin the area of education. A tevery academic level,from high schoolto graduate s tudy, more AfroAmericans

were enrolled than ever before. Problemsremain, however, that have been solvedneither by traditional white and blackacademicians,nor by their black nation-alist critics.

About one fifth of all blacks wereil-literate as late as 1930. Overone third ofall black children betweenthe ages of 5and 20 were not enrolled in school in1940.

Th e demand for an end to JimCrowrestrictions in public accommodationsswiftly became a general critique ofsegregationist civil society, especiallyitseducational,institutions. -ThousandsofAfroAmericans completed collegeandsubsequently were ableto become morecompetitive in various job markets.

Th e statistical evidenceon overalleducat ional advancementfor the past20 years is impressive. From 1960 to 1975,the percentage of black adults over 25

years old who had completed high schoolrose from20 percentto 43 percent.In 1960, for example, the median

school years completed for blacks andwhites between 25 and 34 was 9.3 yearsand 12.1 years respectively. W hites wereover twice aslikely to finish high schooland college as blacks. By 1975, 12 per-cent of all blacks and 20 percent of allwhites have college diplomas. The medianschool years completed for blacks is 12.3years and 12.7 yearsfor whites.

The price for these gains was unclearat first, even to most black educators.Even in the '60s, the great majorityofolack students attended traditionallyblack colleges. Mostqlfhese institutionsare located in the Souftf, established du r-ing or immediately after Reconstruc-tion. Tuitions were relatively low,andstudent enrollments rarely exceededonethousand. These small black collegeswere responsible for developing scholarslike DuBois, John Hope Franklin an dCharles Johnson. They remainthe bed-

rock for black academicand cultural life.Today, overone million blacks attend

white colleges and universities, aboutfour times the number attending the tra-ditionally black ins titutions. Most of thebetter qualified studentsprefer Harvardand Berkeley over Morehouse and How-ard. Many prominentfaculty at blackcolleges movedto white schools becauseof higher salaries,benefitsand academicstatus.

Ironically, asblack higher educationprospered, traditional black colleges werebeing rapidly destroyed.A s a greaterproportion of lower-income black stu-dents were admitted in recent years,black colleges beganto assumea steadilyincreasing share of total costs. At mostschools, over 90 percent of all studentsnow receive financialaid, and onlyabout 5 percent are able to pay their to-tal tuition. Th e lack of a philanthropictradition among blackalumni at mostschools meant that black administratorshad to appeal to Washington for fiscalhelp. Until recently H.E.W. an d otherdepartme nts usually ignored the growingdesperate financialsituation at these in-stitutions.

There are now indications that theCivilRights Movement 's com mitmenttointegration-at-all-costs, especially inhigher education,has not significant lyreduced wh ite racismand discriminationagainst black students. About halfof allblacks who graduatedfrom colleges thisspring wereat black schools. Over seven-ty-fivepercent of all black veterinarians,dentists an d medical doctors graduatedfrom black institutions.On the otherside of the color line, black dropout ratesat white universi t ies exceed60 percent .Most w hite colleges h ave begunto cutback in their minority recruitment, spec-ial services and Black Studies faculty.

Blacks will probably find it increas-ingly difficult to obtain admission towhite graduate and medical schools, de-pending on the interpretat ion of the1978 Supreme CourtBakke ruling. Af-firmative action programs have beenwatered down at some institutions; anumber of prominentand politicallyac-tive black faculty at white institutionshave been denied tenure over recentyears. The 1977-78 censusstatistics indi-cate a declinein black college enrollmentfor the first t imein many years .

Some larger black universities,likeTuskegee Institute, Atlanta Universityan d Howard Universi ty wil l cont inueto

attract philanthropican d federalaid.But there is the real danger that themajority of traditionally black, Southerncollegeswill close their doors perm anent-ly by he 1990s.

Manning Marable is currently writingthe history of TuskegeeInstitute withthe assistance of a Rockefeller Founda-tion grant. In January he will begin teach-ing history at the African Studies Center,Cornell U niversity.

as BlackStudiesFailed?

HAR OLD CRUSE

Reviewingmy ten years' experience inacademia is similarto ret racinga jour-ney to what seemeda climb to the heightsof the Parna ssus of intellectual solvencyan d creat ive commitmentto advancingsocial thought, only tofind that ma ny ofthe members of that remote and exclu-sive tribal societyat the top reacted as ifI had been misinformed regarding myintended destination.

When I arrived at the UniversityofMichigan in 1968, the unive rsity systemwa s responding to calamitous socialt rends outs ide academia in a fashionthat had not been witnessed sincethe'30s.

Despite what certain historians latersaid, among the welter of the"60s domes-tic American movementsthe black move-ments , not the labor movementor the

Me administratorsst,career-oriented classes, BWomen'sStudiesstruggle

"class struggle" between capital andlabor, werethe most catalytic,the mostcrucial. On the university front, theBlack Studies Program movement wasthe university contributionto the surgefor social advance. My own contributionto this academic innovat ionwas to playa leading role in establishing the "Afro-American StudiesProgram" at the Uni-versity ofMichiganin the fall of 1969.

Similar to Black Studies programsacross the ivied landscape, the "Afro-American StudiesProgram" at the Uni -versityof Michigan wa s born in a mael-strom of conflict an d confusion. Theprogram wa s backed by an administra-tion for "political" reasons only. Veryfew administrators or even faculty atMichiganhad the least notionof what a"Black Studies" curriculum was allabout in 1969. On e major Michigan his-torian remarked that there was notenough "substance" in the black exper-ience to merit special study. This samehistorian has not been able to say any-thing "new" about th e American his-torical experience sincethe '60s.

Th e average white academicin thesocial sciencesdid not accept the legiti-macy of "Afro-AmericanStudies," bu tthen nei therdid the average black aca-demic. Th e average black academic,de -spite lip-serviceto the "black experi-ence," was still committed to the aca-demic primacy of the traditional disci-plines in the social sciences. The av-erage black student, ridingthe crest ofpopular vogue, wanted onlythe "posi-tive" interpretation of the black experi-ence. The average white student respond-ed to the newest ethnic-racial fashioninacademia.

The University of Michigan did not

respond badlyat all, but in at least for-ma l good fai th . What remainedto bedone depended uponthe resourcefulnessof black administrators, directors andfaculty to cultivatean d shore up the in-trinsicvalidityof Black Studies programs.In most cases, after some ten years ofexistence, theythe black facultytakenas a wholehave.failed.

At the University of Michigan, theCenter for Afro-American an d AfricanStudies, as it came to be called beginningwith 1970, has, in nine years, had eightchanges in directorships .Th e programwa s retarded by a continuing internalideological strugglefor dominance be -tween the advocatesof "Afro-AmericanStudies" an d "African Studies." In themeantime, the black and white enroll-ment in the undergraduate courseoffer-ings dropped from approximately 150-175 to 50 and below.

Today it is questionable how longthese programscan be sustainedon cer-tain campuses, including thatof Har-

vard U niversi ty.Th e general fate seemsto be that Black Studies courses ,wherevervalid, willbe absorbed into thecurricula of traditional departments inthe social sciences.

If the Black Studies developmentsignaled the fact that the social scienceshad to, belatedly, accommodate theirgeneral contents to more intensive inter-pretations of the black experience, thenthese programs, despite theirflaws andimperfections, have accomplished theirmission. But if Black Studiespro-grams wereto become standard featuresof the university, then Black Studiesprograms have,for the most part, failed.On the whole, th e young, black facultywho matriculated duringan d after the'60s became pale black versionsof con-ventional white academicians, revealingonly a spark of intellectual originalityhere an d there. Th e average black stu-dent entering the university today ha slittle or no conception of what the '60swere all about. If you told them that the.Watts or Detroit racial uprisings of the'60s were caused by angry black troopsreturning home from WWII, mostofthem would believe you. Moreover, mostof them are not interested in "BlackStudies."

In short, the long range solvencyofBlack Studies is very doubtful as sep-arate programs. Yet the disciplines ofhistory an d social studies have beenpermanently influenced. Perhaps thatisall that could have realistically beenex-pected.

Harold W . Cruse is Professor Historyan d Afro-American Studies at the Uni-versity of Michigan.

'omenFight to KeepHard WonGains

ANNETTE KOLODNY

Th e present situationof women facul-ty in the halls of academe is dismal. An dthe future looks bleaker still.

In the 1974-75 academic year,the per-centage of women facultyin all depart-ments across the country wa s 22.5 per-cent. In 1976-77 women accountedfor22.4 percent of the nation's faculty inhigher education. Recent reports by the

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