Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

Force on Higher Education the discussions
began deductively. They
were held in a classroom, and an
the chalkboard the concrete problems
of Black education trailed
down diagonally in sub-categories
from beneath the overarching statement
of abstract goals . It took two
days to reverse the proces . By Sunday,
the Task Force was beginning
with specific problems and moving,
not so much toward solutions, but
rather toward a functional framework
within which solutions might
be found . It was an exercise in
restraint, and it was based on the
simple recognition that the collective
wisdom of the Task Force did
not include all the ultimate answers .
Discussions of Black education
often collapse at the question of
whether we should create history
or merely change it. Talk about
Black autonomy, Black unity, and
the consistency of a comprehensive
Black ideology seem rather longrange,
visionary, and dangerously
theoretical to someone who wants
a program, now, to meet the specific
and immediate needs of Black
people . Arguments over the issue
are usually lengthy and divisive .
The one side argues that Black students
in a white educational context
are oppressed, that the environment
in both white and dependent
Negro institutions is hostile to the
educational growth of Black people,
and that autonomous Black institutions
hold the key to Black cultural
survival. The opponents are
usually wise enough to concede all
that, but they hasten to point out
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that quite a large number of Black
students can be expected to remain
in the hostile environment at least
through tomorrow, and that what
we do today to relieve the oppression
constitutes progress .
Another aspect of the same basic
dilemma concerns the need for
unity of purpose in Black educational
affairs . Arguments in favor
of unity (which always involves
sacrifice) run head-on into vehement
criticism from creative Black
people who, in their own areas,
have designed and implemented
plans for solving local problems .
Even when they are accused of
"tribalism" (a curious pejorative
in the post-Tarzan era), they maintain
their allegiance to their own
diverse programs, which they view
as being more concretely valuable
than any number of abstract constructs
flitting beneath some intellectual's
bush. If unity is not supportive
of Black people's efForts to
solve Black people's problems,
then it is not unity at all .
At about this point in the dialogue
a youngish militant is apt to
get up and imply, by whatever suggestion
he makes, that the contenders
on both sides should be shoved
through the nearest open window
so that the Black people in the
room can tend to business . Often,
though, he makes a tactical error .
He either calls for an end to overblown
rhetoric andpompous theorizing,
which supports the one side,
or he admonishes all present to "get
our thing together," which endears
him to the other . When someone
March 1969 NEGRO DIGEST