In The Bat House
October 5, 2009
This image has been posted with express written permission.
This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
‘You Get Used To It’
October 5, 2009
This image has been posted with express written permission.
This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
Understanding Iran
October 5, 2009
This image has been posted with express written permission.
This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
What Should African-American Studies Students Learn?
October 5, 2009
While this year has become best known as the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock, it was also forty years ago that the first African-American Studies department was established, at San Francisco State University.
Forty-one fall semesters later, there are hundreds of such departments. Has what they teach evolved with the march of time?
I explore that question here at the Minding the Campus site sponsored by my think tank. My point is that the typical African-American Studies department holds front and center a particular lesson: that racism is more influential in American life at present than one might initially think, and always has been.
Urban history? Blacks were penned into segregated districts and then factory jobs available to modestly educated men were moved to China. Politics? Radicalism has been most interesting, whether or not it was the source of most black success. Performance? Most resonant in how it Spoke Truth to Power.
Is that all we are? Is that all we have been? Is it irrelevant to cover how black people have triumphed against the obstacles? Especially since so many have trumphed that today there are more middle class black people than poor ones? Is the main relevance of the fact that we have a black President–ahem!!!!–that his election didn’t mean, as if anyone thought it did, that there did not remain some racist idiots here and there?
It’s time that African-American Studies departments let go of the sixties imperative to defend blacks as eternal victims of racism. Black people can do their best even under imperfect conditions–and if that reality is irrelevant to an African-American Studies curriculum, then we must question the value of said curricula to those whom they purport to speak up for: real people in this real world. This real world which will never be perfect–even for descendants of African slaves.
In 2009, the study of blackness must be the study of a race most of whose members are now victors, not victims. Certainly the victims must be studied–but only within a genuine commitment to saving them, not chronicling them as helpless until America turns upside down in a fashion no one could seriously imagine will ever happen.
Stupid Human Tricks
October 5, 2009
This image has been posted with express written permission.
This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
The Agony Of Defeat
October 5, 2009
This image has been posted with express written permission.
This cartoon was originally published at Town Hall.
