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- "T- · .. . . ' ' . LACK .. y , ••~ . l ,, ' '. . '1] .. , ' !1JOOO[Q) • . f . �COOPERATION-NOT COMPETITION: COMM UNITY - NOT THE INDIVIDUAL. 11 11 From Poolhall P.-ddress De livered at It, Miesissippi ( February 2, 1960) "Keep your cue- stick chalked, 11 -Junebug Jabbo Jones- �Education, as it: is now constituted, is a disruptive force to the needs of Afro-Americans and the Afro-American community, To focus on this thesis, it is necessary to discuss the beginnings and history of Negro education. The first schools black people attended, were slave breaking schools, where black men, women and children, would have their spir-its broken in order to make them into obediant servants of their white masters. The history of our education in the United States cannot be separated from this fact. In Africa, Asia, etc., education grew out of what people had to do in order to survive and the need for one generation to pass on to the Rext the knowledge acquired through experience. But in America, where white men and black men met, this was not the case. In America, some men were taught to be masters, and others were taught to be slaves. Mass edu:: ati on in the United States grew out of the need to rationalize racism and exploitation in the United States . It i s important to understand this if we are to begin to effectiv ely deal with the problems of edu::ationwe face today. The first Negro colleges were set up for the half-breed or !!illegitimate" children of whi te slave owners. understood then, as he does not.r, Afro-American community. the nec~ss1'ty The white man of spl:tntering tJ1e The most effective mechanism for affecting this has .been the tttt.!8ht- arrl bred-in orientation towards a white culture projected as superior. �There are many historical examples of how Negro edte ational institutions have abdicated their respohsibilities to the Afro-= . \ .American cbrnmuni ty, am embraced the concept of white supremacy. During it's early days, Howard University required you to submit a picture of yourseli before you w~re admitted. Of course, the , ,I picture established yollt Golor crec1entials. ,t;If white, all right; if bladki bet back;" al6ng with the tr palm test" i--the palm of your \ I hah1 had th eome damn d1ose tb the color of your face in order for yob to get i lnl At F!sk University, the Fisk Jubilee SiI~ers were "happy ahd satisfied," educated darkies, in the finest of white cultural trad ition; and to this day are acclaimed for establishing much of the prominence and validity of Fisk University. They sang before Queen Victoria of Bri ti an (which at thr t · time was the major colonial force ' oppressing our colonia~ brothers and sisters around the wor1d ...--11 the sun never sets on the British Empire, 11 11 take up the white mans burden" am that sort of rot) --- and were acclaimed great because th ey sang by white standards (four part harmoni es, round ed tones, and pr oper diction), am didn't pat their feet, shout, and get happy- -ya 1 11 know, embarrass the race. Booker T. ~Washington and his policy of accommod ation is another example of Negro education. Tuskef;iee Institute was attempting to provide Negroes with "industri al education11 • At the beginning of the 20th Century, the industrialists who financed Booker T. kr:lliW industrial education was not going to do the black �man any good. It was outdated arrl could only keep the black man in tasks of menial, servile, labor. Today, there is a statue of Booker T. on Tuskeegee 1 s campus, in which he is supposedly raising the v&'.1:1 from over the head of a young Negro who is kneeling. At least some people say that he is raising the wil; probably he is lowering it. But, supposing for the moment t ~at he is raising it, that statue f ·-.flds as a symbol of the fact of Booker T. 1 s acceptance of the j dohc ept of Afro-Americans' inferiority- that Afro-Am~rftans had toi be raised and uplifted to the level of whites. Ih oth ~r words, Booker T~ tva~ a white supremist (an insidious example . of the white ,j war to annihilate feelings of blackness is found in the number of 1,, Negro schoo i~ Ht3med Booker T. Wash i hgton) i I I I I ' .
At <Net y leve l , f.he history of our educati on has he~ motion I towards wht~~ start1 etds cuit ure~· ot a white posture, wlii ch was t;:j;f somehoJ sup~o§ed to be s Jperi or l . I Educ ated Negroes -were set up as a s ~patate class, the model toward which the community should aspi re i n order to be consid ered 11 civilized, 11 or on the way to progr ess. Negr o progress is measured by its closeness to total i mitati on of the -whi t e mode l . Another exampl e of the orient ati on towards whiteness- i s
reflec t ed in the ori entat ion of freshm an males at Howard University.
On the first night of residence, fr eshman males are gathered on top
of Dr ew Hall and warned of the dangers of the surrounding community
of northwest Washington.
11
Bl ock boys" beat up Howard men, r ape
gi r ls and steal, the students are t old .
The are f urther t old, that
�if they have . to go out at night (to be avoided if possible), try
not to go out alone.
'
Avoid community parties.
Always, the posture
I
of the university is how to defend yoursGJ.f from that savage, wild,
uncivilized community.
•
those niggers.
They are saying in fact, "yott':re better than
I
You might get your picture in Eboey Magazine."
I'
this is a double tragedy, because 1) Howard University students
are subject to all the ciliove dangers. Howard is an alien in what
.
• •I
could be a resp6nsive community; and 2) given what it is oriented
I I
to, it seems impossible for Howard to change itself in order to
become relevant to the needs of the Afro-Americ~ns community around
!
it.
Therefor~, it stands as a source bf frustration !n the eJes
of the
A:fro1...Ameri ~an dommJni ty that surrounds it, subject to the
host ili t y t hat f lows from what it (Howard) denies.
Howard is typic al of Negro schools.
To describe them in
terms of what they r eally are is to call them is~snds of whiteness
in a sea of blackness.
These schools relate to the white community,
and feed individual Negroes into the white community, that is they
t each these i ndividuals how to step on the backs of their bl ac k broth ers,
"up" towards wh itey, and/or act as a buffer and transmit th e 'tJlite
mes sage and c ul ture into the Afroc:American communi t ies.
In a real
and profound sense, Negro schools are only i nportant as t hey rel ate
to the whi t e communi ty.
They t ell the Afro-American peopl e that you
are inferi or; that yo u have noth i ng to offer; t hat you are rot worth
giving anything to.
Negro educational institutions are very much
vulnerable to questions
f.'rom
Afro-Americans as to why th ey should be
allowed to ~ist if they continue to play such a destructive role in
our community..
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�If we accept the proposition that Negro schools are -whiteoriented, ard geared not to th~ neea of A1r6-Amerid~hs, but to the
needs of white supremacy, then to examine Negrb edt.rl a.ti on is also
to
ekamine in part the nature 6£ education in this country.
I.
.
The
-
idea b:t education as a magic key that unibcks the door, that gives
you entrar.ce into the chambe~, that has tHe tuttons, that runs
. things, is a myth,
us in our place.
The educ ad on tHat tve get
i~
designed to keep
For irstance, in Cctober, when Stokely Carmichael
was invited to speak at Fisk as a gu<fat lecturer by students involved
in the honors program; the white people of Nashville put pressure
on acting Fisk President James Lawson to cancel the engagement.
Knuckling under to pressure, Lawson cancelled the engagement on
the supposition that Carmichael's presence would be disruptive to
the campus ard the city of Nashville.
We have to urderstand that education is exclusive.
The
persora who are educated, or the children of the persons who are
educated, have the best chance of being edt..-cated.
does not expand very much.
~Q
this exclusiveness.
In white society, class is important
In the Negro community, caste and class
are ~P.Y to this exclusiveness.
to white
~Q
And, as you know, those closest
of the highest caste.
Ed"tCation
a myth.
That circle
~.:S
a key to running things in the country is also
The nountry is run ~.d:f'ormally and the first requirement is
no", a college degree, but a white skin. How maey presidents of
mc\_:Or corporatioris have you s een ~ve-rt.:i sed for?
They are bred.
�I
Tuey meet certain social, as well as ed~eational requ rements! If
~
.
they have a college degree, it is because socially, It's required
these days.
And us scuffling niggers is just out here, believ.tng
all the stuff the man says about
up',
1get
a degree arrl work your way
like the brother in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man who on
seeing the contents of an envelope given him by the President of
what might be Tuskegee, saw: "Keep this nigger running."
Toe motion of the so-called civil rights movement around
the question of edteation has been on the assumption thlit Negro
schools were inferior in this society.
for the teachers.
The facilities were poor
The teachers were poor for the students. The
students were culturally inferior.
Finally, in 1954, the
u. s.
Supreme Court decided that us poor cullud folks could go to the
superior white folks schools.
They did it for us, they say,
however, in many respects the 195h
.S,.q.:rcmC? C'.0111't . deuieion
marks
a new stage in the United States program of International Pacifi.-a-t-.iou.
Faced with a world-wide struggle against westerm imperla-
lism, the
u. s. had to project an appearance of resolving the
contradiction between it 1s claims as a representative of "democracy',
arrl "freedom", and it 1 s domestic policy of racial exploitation.
Needless to say, the hypocrisy of that move is reflected today in
both the Vietnam war an::l the situation of Afro-Americans.
The white schools decided to integrate with
speed".
That is, about 4 or 5 years apart.
II
all deliberate
We were supposed to
be most appreciative of this opportunity opened up to tS through
the
II
good" graces of white society. Halleluah, we could all go
to white schools.
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�We began to feel as if we had to push as many Negroes as
we could into these schools, in order that they get the information
that we felt whites were getting.
This was vitally necessary to
functioning in the white society.
The whole Afro-American community
was kept in motion, directing our energies towards the responsibilities necessary to allow individuals .from our community to function
in the white mans society.
Several thi~s happened in regards to this integration effort.
There was massive resistarce, especially in the south and in the
north when we came in great masses.
became all black.
Fo~merly all-white schools
We began to realize that if we ever wanted to
integrate with whites, we would have to chase them all over the
country. The south in macy instanc es put up [hysical resistance.
- ----
In order to make it easier on the whites, in some northern areas it was proposed that a few black students be bussed out of the ghetto before dark. Sort of a daytime whiteness attempt. And in the south, we were asked to ignore spit in our faces, mobs around our children ard bombs thrown at our homes. On the col lege level, the effort of Negr o colleges is to become as "good" as white am , therefor e, schools like Harvard, Yale, etc. are being used to evaluate the needs of Negr o educ ation. One result of t hese kinds of evaluati ons is th at the President of Howard University has recommended that within five to ten years, Howard become 60% white in order to be able to compete with white schools. In essence he was saying that it was impossible for a Negro school--that is a school for those of African descent, a black -7- �school--to measure up to white schools; therefore, these schools must be flooded with whites, who 1s presence by definition would brir:g superiority. Another development in regards to Negro colleges is the concept of pairing. Prioceton takes responsibility for Miles, the University of Michigan for Tuskeegee, Brown for Tougaloo. These schools irould corre{;t standards, design a better curriculum in f- c: nns ci.1 n a ti onal edttc a.t i onal st andards. Whiten them. Brothers an:1 Sisters "First there is a tragedy, then there is a farce". The deep crisis in education that we face today flows from a much broader and profound political problem that pervades every segment of the black community. In a ]itiase, we, blacks, control none of the resources and institutions in our communities. And, until ~e can begin to move to exercise this control over our lives, anything else is an exer cise in futility. Ed~ation consists mainly of t wo factors: indoctrination to a certain poi nt of v i ew (e.g. the slaves we r e civ i li zed by being brought here; the I nd ians were savages and destroying them was tami r.g the west); arrl the accumulation of factual infor matio n (e.g . the s un is~tn the sky - water is wet). However, our indoc trination in many r espects determines wh at i s fac t ual . For example, you would laugh if we said that England wasn' t discovered unti 1 t he first time Sekou Toure, President of the African country of Guinea, first set foot there, but we accept the idea of Columbus' discovery of America, despite the fact that pilq:le were here to meet him. - 8- �• - Columbus, a poor navigator at best, accidentally got here trying to get to India ar.d he died thinking he had made it to India. We are only educated in our schools, but the white attitude also breaks into the Afro-American community through television, radio, movies and magazines (both white and white aspiring-dig Ebony); through advertising such as Nadinola, Silky Straight and the white knight that drives out dirt. In fact, we are overwhelmed. It is safe to say that every device for indoctrination irx::ludi ng institutional education is used to lock us mentally within the white prison of western civilization. If we are to survi"':~, we must break the chains that bind our minds and bodies within the prison of western civilization. We must, ~therefore, build within our communities, educational insitutions that allow us to locate and utilize in our own interests, the resources that we have as a people. This effort, which we must all commit ourselves to, will be resisted, as it has been historically by this country and her sister countries of the West, who 's committment to the protection of white supremacy prevents an urrl erstanding of human rights and r.eeds. We want to begin now, to bre.ak out of a very negative concept of ourselves an::1 of our possibi liti-es taught us as a result of our American captivity. •' We should urderstand that thile th ere world wide oppression an::1 exploitation along color lines, there is strength for us in the struggle against the oppression. For we, the oppressed, represent 87% of the worlds population. We have outlined a di'seription of white cultural ard educational domination arrl many of you must be asking by now, how do we deal with this? -9- �How do we move as Afro-lIJericans to meet our educational needs? Let us begin to think of a school, international in i tts scope, yet parochial in that it 1s aimed at the needs of Afro-Americans colonized within the United States. Toe thrust of su::h a school would be to break out of the mental barriers posed by western (the u.s. in particular) education. There would be a positive and a direct effort to relate to Africa, Asia and Latin America. Langu99e as a basic communications tool, would be very important; emµiasis would be put on these lengu99es: Swahili and French in terms of Africa; Spanish in terms of Latin America; Chinese an~ Japanese inr:terms of Asia. Coupled with this language learnir:g process would be to travel to countries in these areas to begin to break through the overwhelming mental effect of a life with in the American society who-iif every fuoction is controlled by whit es. We need to begin to conceive of our community light. in a different Instead of a place to esc ape from, we must now see our lif e, · work, l abor and love, in t erms of th at community. With t his different attitude toward s our community in t erms of our life work, we mus t begin to get specifi c technic a l s kills directly r elevant to the AfroAmerican c ommuni ty. Spec ific t echnic a l ski l l s gotten by indiv iduals should be seen as c ommunity resources rather than individual profit; for true profit for the indiv idual flows from t he profit of his community. Medical care and health for example, would be organized as community programs, not as lucrative private practices. Technicians would see as a part of their work, the organizing and eocourage\ ment of their communities to tap it 1s own resources in it's own mr~~e.$t~. -10- �For in the fh1al analysis, education is not a gathering of intellectual skills, but a preparation for participation in living; and life is lived with people and community. Integral to the purpose of this kind of s&.n ool, is the shedding of our inability to understand in anything other than - western cultural standards. The west is not the culture, but a - culture; one of many and in many ways more primitive than most. We, asAfro-Americans, mt.JSt choose on which side of the color line we stand. We have, in fact, only one choice. choice is made by the color of our skins. LET US NON FREPARE. Copyright 1967 Student Voice 36o Nelson Street, s. w. Atlai~-~~ Geo't'gia 30313 The �
