Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 23
in expensive private schools tended to confirm the elitism of the humanities.
It was difficult, also, to shake the Veblenian assessment that the pursuit
of the liberal arts was merely an example of the conspicuous display of
wealth; who else but the rich could afford to spend four years in pursuit of
an education having no practical end? Humanists also easily drew the
charge of elitism because they tended to think of their work as having a civilizing
influence, and because their work (particularly in literature, the fine
arts, and music) called upon them to make judgments as to quality. Some
works were better than others; some writers, artists, and musicians were
better than others. Those artists and works of art not studied, discussed,
and evaluated were, by implication, inferior.
In practice, the liberal arts curriculum reduced itself to courses concerned
with not just civilization, but Western civilization. Sometimes emphasis
was placed on the “disciplines,” sometimes on interdisciplinary
approaches to “great issues,” sometimes on the “great books” approach.
The object was always the same: Matthew Arnold’s “acquainting our selves
with the best that has been known and said in the world.” Though the
“world” of Matthew Arnold was small, it probably did include “acquaintance”
with Islamic and Asian culture. Compared to Arnold’s, the “world”
of postwar American scholars in the humanities—products of university
Ph.D programs—was Lilliputian. It certainly did not encompass Asia,
Africa, and Latin America. Most American teachers in the humanities assumed
our heritage (their students’ as well as their own) to be the history
and culture of the West. They could hardly imagine an American youngster
of whatever ethnic background challenging that assumption. 8
Most supporters of the liberal arts probably did not really believe that
what they taught comprised the “world” or “civilization.” Rather, they supposed
certain concepts, ideals, principles, values, to be universal rather than
particular to any people or culture. Those values were, nevertheless, accessible
through certain texts and other cultural artifacts of a Western tradition,
a tradition that could be studied as coherent and whole. King Lear,
Medea, Machiavelli, Plato, Kant, Locke, Mill, Jefferson posed questions as
relevant to a Chinese, a Malayan, a Ugandan, or a Nigerian as to an American
of any ethnic background.