Black Colleges Redefined

Abstract

Illustration by Paul Spina minority a curious reflection of majority. I say curious because in human social system minority provides a double reflection: It indicates what society has been and what it can be. Richard Wright recognized this several decades ago when he wrote, We black folk, our history and our present being, are a mirror of all manifold experiences of America. Whites, he said, can better understand themselves majority by coming to know minority. I begin this discussion on future of black colleges and universities by emphasizing function of minorities in society in hope of replacing frame of reference used by national leaders such Daniel Patrick Moynihan. He suggested that progress of minority seriously retarded when its way of life is out of line with rest of American society. This implies that minorities should be other-directed, that their behavior should be imitative, that they should be remade in image of whites. And Christopher Jencks and David Riesman, in a 1967 Harvard Educational Review article, American Negro College, called black college of midtwentieth century ill-financed, ill-staffed caricature of white higher education. Michael Meyers of NAACP has attempted to dismiss argument for continuation of black colleges an outcry of emotionalism, ethnic chauvinism, and paternalism. He summed up his view with this statement: No matter what else taught or how well it taught, fact that a school segregated teaches that there a qualitative difference between students in black and white colleges. Clearly Meyers's assumption that black colleges are second rate. Apparently, any approach to education that differs for blacks does not make sense to Meyers or Moynihan. In this respect, they are bedfellows. The logic of positing a different educational approach for minority lost on both critics. Meyers has formulated question wrongly in assuming that the issue at stake in current controversy over all-black colleges segregation. Others believe that issue education! With this kind of criticism coming from friends of black institutions, it difficult for these colleges to get a hearing regarding what they can, could, and should do not only for blacks but for education of nation. Yet our national history offers evidence that approach of minority may in end be of great value to majority. W.E.B. Du Bois said that public school system in most southern states began with enfranchisement of blacks. The idea that masses should be educated to effectively participate in public decision making was formulated by Thomas Jefferson several decades before Civil War, but was not implemented until blacks became members of southern state legislatures during Reconstruction. In early 1800s there was no public educational system in South, except perhaps in North Carolina. In his study, Black Reconstruction in America, Du Bois said that education was regarded by poor whites before Civil War as a luxury connected with wealth. In Thomas Jefferson's Virginia, for example, less than one half of poor white children were attending any The laws passed in South Carolina between 1856 and 1870 that authorized tax-supported schools open to all were described in book the most beneficial legislation state... has ever enacted. These laws were initiated and supported by black lawmakers. One could say of Reconstruction black legislators that progeny of former slaves fulfilled for all people slave owner's dream of publicly supported education in South. In contemporary times, blacks have continued to link legislation and idea of liberation in a way that has improved education for members of their own race and for whites. Each day before he leaves home for his classes, Allan Bakke should thank God that there are racial minorities in America whose political action resulted in a law that guarantees his right to attend medical school. That law Civil Rights Act of 1964. John Monro of Tougaloo College (see box, page 30) has said that if more white colleges used readings from black authors, readings that develop a full and accurate awareness of American black experience, this country would be much better off. He acknowledged, however, that the white colleges are not going to do it, or anything like itwhich one reason sensible people prefer to teach in black colleges. CHARLES V. WILLIE, a sociologist, professor of education and urban studies, Harvard Graduate School of Education. He and Ronald R. Edmonds are coeditors of Black Colleges in America, reviewed in this issue.