Negro Digest - Freedom Archives

e done without some base of support which is controlled by the protagonists
. This is, of course, a major question for those of us who favor
the creation of a Black University and ought to be decided as soon as
possible . But let me go on .
There have always been persons among us who have argued that
no black program of any kind should be placed in white schools . The
people who make this argument generally believe that we should be setting
up schools in the black community . And there are really few people
who do not agree that this should be done . The problem here is that
there are obstacles involved which many of us feel we are not presently
geared to handle . Foremost among these is the aggressive recruiting
activities being conducted among our people by major colleges and universities
all over the West Coast . Whereas we could match the aggression
(which is still minimal), we are in no position to match the lucrative
aid and assistance packages that they are handing out . And until we
have done a sufficient amount of ground work, we will not be able to
compete with the "name" and prestige of these institutions, na matter
how unearned and unjustified these "names" and their prestige are . And
this is not a fact to be scoffed at . Indeed, recent efforts to force these
same colleges and universities to deal with our needs have been seriously
hampered by the lack of participation by many students who refused
to get involved because they were afraid that "their money" would be
cut off or that they would lose the "opportunity" of attending "big name"
schools that they had always aspired to attend . We don't like this, but
the average "brother" is still more entranced by the notion of attending
"Cal" than he is about attending any school that we could get together
in the community . This is a problem to which I see no solution until
we have begun to be more realistic in our assessment of it .
At Berkeley, we finally decided that the only way we could even hope
to deal with this trend, and perhaps reverse the attraction syndrome of
which so many students are victims, would be to set up some kind of
black program that would act as a kind of "catch" mechanism . This is
to say that we had no intention, at this point, of actually institutionalizing
any Black Studies program in a white school . Instead, we hoped simply
to have enough of a program to "catch" the minds and energies of those
students who would surely come to Berkeley, and direct them to where
they were really needed-the black community! We had no illusion
that just getting black students into the black community was going to
solve all-or any-of the problems there . On the contrary, we had
actually experienced the fallacy of this notion . We had always encouraged
students to go to the community and to offer service . Anytime we managed
to get a few of them to actually do this, invariably the same problem
would arise : they had no skills or experience that qualified them to deal
16
March 1970 NEGRO DIGEST