Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

48 Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States
Patterns of Ideology
The Black student movement, in sharp contrast to the White, was virtually
indifferent to Marxist ideology. Doctrinal disputes within the American
Left over Marxism had been intense since World War I, and what conflict
there was within the White-student left can be seen as a continuation of the
tradition.
Most Blacks, if asked, would have defined themselves as sympathetic
to the Marxian interpretation of social change (that is, to the view that
racial oppression was the result of an exploitative economic system) and to
the view that racial justice would most likely be achieved under some form
of socialism, but few were committed to an ideological faction. (Angela
Davis, of course, had been an exception.) They would have said, rather, that
their unity in Blackness transcended political factionalism.
They divided themselves roughly into two camps: integrationists and
separatists. This division had to do not so much with desired goals for a future
society as with a predisposition to work with Whites in conventional
institutions or to focus on self-development among Blacks. The one was
not necessarily anti-Black, nor the other necessarily anti-White; they had,
rather, to do with efficacy and the relative importance one placed on racial
identification. The separatists, also, could be divided into“Black Power”advocates
and cultural nationalists.
Integrationists
Few in this group defended American colleges’and universities’past or present
policies with regard to race. Few denied the need for courses having to
do with Afro-Americans. Hardly any found White faculty and administrators
faultless in their attitudes and feelings about race. Integrationists, however,
insisted that Blacks had to succeed in terms of these imperfect
institutions and people, the better to function in the even less perfect world
outside. Nothing could be gained, save the comforts of self-indulgence, by
defining oneself outside the system. Black students and their faculty allies,
the integrationists felt, made a serious mistake in demanding an “auton-