Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 83
decade of the 19th century when African Americans founded a
number of organizations that sought to preserve and publicize the
legacy of the African diaspora through the theoretical refinement
and more sophisticated analysis and interpretation of the mid 1980s.
Harris’s stages of development set the parameters for an evaluation process
and are enormously helpful in mapping and assessing the growth and current
state of the field.
In her “Black Studies: An Overview,” Darlene Clark Hine explores the
nomenclature of the field: African American, Afro-American, Africana,
Black Studies—titles evidencing the diversity of the field. Hine found, however,
that although many programs sought to broaden geographical and disciplinary
reach—that is, to fully explore the lives and experiences of peoples
of African descent wherever they are on the globe—few possessed the resources
or faculty to be truly Africana Studies programs. She cites the need
to address such topics as curriculum, identity, mission, structure, graduate
programs, faculty recruitment and retention, accreditation, and professionalization.
Yet, by 1987, when Hine began her study, she found that White
college administrators enthusiastically supported African American Studies
as the site that had racially diversified the university population and
curriculum—notably, the study of Black women was then the new frontier
of African American Studies.
By contrast, Nellie McKay, in her “Black Studies in the Midwest” acknowledges
a commitment among predominantly White institutions to
strengthen African American Studies but questions the extent to which the
field has been accepted in the scholarly community. She notes the backlash
against African American Studies, Black faculty, and Black students on a
number of campuses throughout the country. In addition, she identifies the
special difficulty of recruiting Black scholars to the Midwest because of the
lack of racial diversity within the region. (Here I assume she is not speaking
of such major Midwestern cities as Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, or Cincinnati.)
McKay is the first to take note of the impact of the “star system” on
African American Studies, noting that few public institutions in the Midwest
can afford academic superstars. To McKay, this system is good for individual