Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies - Ford Foundation

Inclusive Scholarship: Developing Black Studies in the United States 49
omy” that would only result in the creation of an academic ghetto, providing
an excuse for Whites to dismiss Blacks as irrelevant or to treat them with
patronizing condescension.
The institution, the integrationists felt, was important to Blacks for
the skills training it offered—skills Blacks had been denied. It was important
also for the experience it offered Blacks in management—the management
of White peers and of an institutional bureaucracy as complicated
and sophisticated as that of a university. Finally, the institution was a certifying
agency whose graduates were assumed to possess intelligence, competence,
and discipline, qualities essential to professional training and
employment. To the integrationist, separating oneself from the institution
or undermining it was self-defeating. Not only must one work through the
institution, but one should protect its academic integrity while getting it to
adopt Afro-American programs. Any victory would be hollow if its “spoils”
were debased in the process of being won. Integrationists, therefore, were
seen as defenders of the university and were often attacked by student radicals
as having been co-opted.
Of course, integrationists were hostile to student demands for separate
facilities. They preferred to see Black Studies courses offered in the
standard curriculum, in conventional departments; perhaps, like other interdisciplinary
programs, administered by a committee made up of faculty
from the several departments involved. They were suspicious that an argument
for “autonomy” was really a plea for racially separate (and Black-controlled)
programs. While they might concede that Blacks, because of special
experience, would bring a unique and necessary perspective to courses in
Black Studies, they rejected the idea that such courses should be taught only
by Blacks and could not be well taught by Whites. While they advocated the
increased hiring of Black faculty (whether or not they supported affirmative
action programs), they did not want to see Black faculty strictly tied to
Black Studies, or affirmative action goals met by the packing of Blacks into
Black Studies programs. They were likely to urge White faculty to teach
courses in the program.
Integrationists were the least troubled by alienation from the Black
community as they did not see success in the university and professional