Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

a situation in a different manner
when blacks are involved than
when whites only are involved .
Thus, a question as to whether a
Negro should quarterback the football
team when he is the best quarterback
involves a racist attitude .
Similarly, concern about whether a
qualified black student should be
given a Rhodes Scholarship is a
racist attitude . The black students
feel that white students working
among the white students to eradicate
racist attitudes is a fundamental
contribution that white students
can make toward better racial understanding.
The black student speaks of relevance
. He says that the curriculum
must be "relevant to the black
experience ." While this sounds like
so much jargon, and is spoken by
some of the students with an almost
ritualistic fervor, their concern
is a valid one. What the black
students mean is that the curriculum
should eive them some insights
about the black man's role in society
and help them to develop
those skills which will enable them
to improve life in the ghetto . Thus,
the black students want courses in
black art . black music, the economics
of poverty and the economics
of the ghetto . This does not
mean that most black students
want to go back to the ghetto as
social workers or teachers . They
want to become participating
members of society in all of its aspects
. and want to use their knowledge
to help black people in many
ways. The present generation of
NEGRO DIGEST Mareh 1969
black students is aware of those
omissions in their education which
if rectified might help them to be
more effective in their efforts to
improve the lot of all black pea
ple, not just themselves . The cry
for relevance parallels a similar cry
by the student activists in colleges
all over the nation. Those students
are vitally concerned with poverty,
racism, war and injustice . They,
too, feel that the classical tools of
scholarship have not been particularly
helpful to them in dealing
with these concerns. While they
concede that a firm grounding in a
variety of subject areas eventually
might be helpful to them, the urgency
of their youth and the urgency
of the problems that society
faces leads them to cry for more
relevance in their education now.
The present emphasis on programs
for black students offends
many persons, white and black,
because they feel that such an overt
emphasis merely stimulates separatism
and racial divisiveness. At a
first glance, this proposition might
appear to be valid . However, we
must realize that self-respect and
equality are not bestowed on one
group by another, but rather must
be gained by the group being discriminated
against by its own efforts
. This is not to say that white
people cannot play important roles
in the process, but the black man
must be his own spokesman, his
own strategist, and must mobilize
the sentiment among his own people
for change . In the process,
there is apt to be a strong overreac-
3 1