Africana Studies Exam 1

6 Phases of Cohesion

1. Protest phase

2. Institutionalization phase

3. Developmental phase

4. Colazation phase

5. operational phase

6. Schools of thought

4 Basic Thrusts of Student Movement

1.Civil Rights Movement

2. Free Speech Movement

3. Anti-Vietnam War Movement

4. Black Power Movement

Civil rights movement

1. Break down barriers of legal segregation in public accommodations

2. Achieve equality and justice for black Americans

3. Organize black Americans into a self conscious force capable of defining, defending and advancing their interests

Free speech movement

White student led protest against the rigid, arbitrary restrictive and unresponsive character of the university

Anti-Vietnam war movement

General student protest against the Vietnam War

Black Power Movement

1. Ushered in new dialogue about power in society and the university

2. Stressed importance of self-determination in culture, politics and education; emphasized the need for achieving and maintaining power

3. Relevant education

Year of Dissent

From November 1968-March 1969, fighting with officials, administrators for addition of a Black Studies department

September 17, 1969

President Robert Smith created a Black Studies department at San Francisco state university

Conditions for emergence

1. Disappointment with civil rights and an unwillingness to wait for outside assistance, this was linked to calls for militancy and black controlled education

2. Rise of groups such as the black panthers in which individuals could learn the intricacies of movement tactics

3. The creation of foot soldiers, the newly admitted black students, who were willing to be active protagonists on campus

Philosophical considerations of black studies

1. Critical and persistent truth and meaning in human history and social reality from an African vantage point

2. Cultivation of commitment and contribution to history of creating a just society

3. An in depth intellectual grasp and appreciation of the ancient, rich, varied and instructive character of the African initiative and experience in the world; essential relevance of African uniqueness

4. Rigorous and alternative intellectual challenge, moral critique, and social policy reform

Discipline

A specific branch of knowledge

Concept

A unit of knowledge

Paradigm

Model of idea(s)

Theory

Set of inner related suppositions to explain a phenomenon

Methodology

System of methods and principles

Interdisciplinary

Combination of two fields for the synthesis of information

Black Studies

The critical and systematic study of the thoughts and practice of people of African descent in their current and historical unfolding

Challenges one sided Western interpretations of historical reality which is complete with intellectual biases, omissions and distortions

Diaspora

The dispersion or scattering of people with a common origin

Pan-African

All Africans and people of African descent

SESH

Thinkers who understood themselves in both moral and social terms and constantly expressed a commitment to using their knowledge and skills in the service of the people

They value knowledge not just for knowledge sake but rather for human sake

Eurocentric

Privileging European people and culture at the expense of the culture and lives of people of color

Service learning

Service projects which are engaged in social responsibility that pursue a just society and the expanded possibilities of an equitable world

Relevant education

An education which was meaningful, useful and reflective of the realities of society and the world

The need to solve the pressing problems of the black community, society, and the world

Basic Objectives of black studies

1. To teach the black experience in its historical and current unfolding

2. To assemble and create a body of knowledge which was contributing to intellectual and political emancipation

3. To create intellectuals who were dedicated to community service and development

4. The cultivation, maintenance , and continuous expansion of a mutually beneficial relationship between the campus and community

5. To establish and reaffirm its position in the academy as a discipline essential to the educational project of a quality education

Ground Developments of black studies

1. It is a definitive contribution to humanity's understanding of itself

2. Contribution to the U.S society's understanding of itself

3. Contribution to the university's realization of its claim and challenge to teach the whole truth or something as close to it as humanly possible

4. A contributor to the rescue and reconstruction of Black history

5. A critical contribution to a new social science

6. Contributes to development of socially conscious black intelligence and professional stratum

7. Vital contribution to the critique , resistance and reversal of the progressive Europeanization of human consciousness

Cultural Grounding

Foundation and framework for Black Studies

Academic excellence

the development of an interpretive capacity to understand and translate African initiate and experience in the world

Social responsibility

Using knowledge to improve the human condition and enhance the human prospect

AHSA

African Heritage Studies Association

First convention held June 1969 at Federal City College in Washington DC

Sought to correct the Eurocentric version of historiography done for political purposes and to address the misinterpretation manufacturing and manipulation of Africa reality in intellectual work

Committed to the preservation, interpretation and creative presentation of the historical and cultural heritage of African people both on ancestral soil of Africa and the diaspora

Dr. John Henrik Clarke

Founding AHSA president

Functions of the AHSA

1. Ground context for scholarly encounter and exchange

2. An organizational role for other professional organization

3. An advocacy organization for black interests in education in general as well as on larger social issues

Fundamental goals of AHSA

1. To examine every aspect and approach to the history and culture of African people in this country and throughout the world

2. To project influence into every organization that relates to Africans and people of the African descent

3. To challenge and question all who claim authority on African life and history

4. To use African history to effect a world Union of African people

5. To establish a new frame of reference to all matters relating to african meaning a critical pan-Africanist perspective which stresses the inner relatedness of African people and linkage of intellectual and practical

6. To define African heritage and to put the components of this heritage together to weld an instrument of liberation

NCBS

National Council of Black Studies

Founded in 1976

Dr. Bertha Maxwell Roddy

First chairperson of NCBS

Article II of the NCBS Constitution

The purpose of NCBS is to be an accrediting body and to promote and strengthen academic and community programs in the area of Black Studies

Future Direction and Goals of NCBS

1. Continued production of discipline literature and organizational documents

2. Ongoing and expanded grant research proposals for development of projects for the discipline, faculty, students and community

3. Continuing organizational professionalization and reorganization for improved performance and service

4. Increasing and enhancing contests for discourse and exchange (i.e conferences, symposia and workshops)

Molefi Asante

Theorized Afrocentricity

Developer of the first PhD program in African American studies in the world at Temple in 1988

Agency

The ability to actualize oneself in the world. Africana agency hindered by years of oppression

Ideology

A set of beliefs, values and assumptions, held on faith alone and generally unrelated to empirical facts, that act as guideline to or prescriptions for individual or group behavior

Afrocentricity changed to Afrocentrism

1. To stress it's intellectual value as distinct from its detractors ideological usage

2. To distinguish it from Eurocentrism

3. To establish it as a systematic quality of the thought and practice

Afrocentric Theory

1. Places African ideals at the center of any analysis that involves African culture and behavior

2. Centeredness

3. A theoretical framework which stresses African agency and treats Africans as active subjects of history rather than objects or passive victims

Quartet of Afrocentricity by Dr. Molefi Asante

1. Afrocentricity: The Theory of Social Change

2. Kemet, Afrocentricity and Knowledge

3. The Afrocentric Idea

4. The Afrocentric Manifesto

Intellectual Conceptions of Afrocentricity

1. African culture is critical to understanding society and the human condition

2. As a methodological orientation, Afrocentricity contends that the most effective way of studying and understanding African people is from their own perspective

3. A way of approaching and interpreting data

Black Women's Studies

1. The intellectual and practical struggles waged by Black women in the discipline itself because Black women scholars produced and insisted upon alternative visions

2. The key role that black women played in developing the two major professional organizations of the discipline: AHSA and NCBS

3. The creative tension and discourse between Black womanists and feminists and white feminists and black studies and white women studies in the academy

4. Inquiry and ongoing criticism of relations into the black freedom movement

Black Studies Response to Multiculturalism

1. Another attempt to dilute and divert the legitimate claims and demands of African people and maintain the dominant worldview

2. A superficial culture diversion from more serious issues of wealth and power

3. A continuation of the struggle for a quality education

Afrocentric Conception of Multiculturalism

1. Mutual respect for each people and culture

2. Mutual respect for each people's right and responsibility to speak their own special truth and make their own unique contribution to society and the world

Classical African Studies

Emergence in the 1980s of increased intellectual and academic stress on the study of classical African civilizations especially Egypt

ASCAC

Association for the study of classical African civilization

Founded at southwest college in Los Angeles in February 1984

Cheikh Anta Diop

Pioneered the African focus on Egypt as a classical African civilization

Physical anthropology

Iconography, melanin dosage tests, osteological measurement and blood group tests

Research methods ASCAC

Physical anthropology

Self definition of Egyptians who called themselves Kmtyu and Kemetia meaning black people

Reports of Greek and Latin witnesses such as Herodotus, Aristotle , Luciem and others who described the Egyptians

The Philadelphia negro (1899)

Initiated the field of urban sociology and advanced empirical sociology

Empirically verified the social and class origins of poverty and inequality

Quantitatively demonstrated that black inequality at that time was a creation of poverty and lack of access to resources rather than the innate inferiority of black Americans

Pragmatism

Human knowledge was severely limited to immediate experience

Maintained that the possibilities for changing the world were restricted to the limitations of human knowledge

As a consequence there were no revolutionary alternatives to poverty, exploitation and oppression

Inorganic tradition

DuBois response to Pragmatism

Pragmatists' limitations on knowledge and transforming the world were intellectually unacceptable

Argued that the ethical and moral imperative was determined on the basis of what actions they led to

Results of Organic Thinking

Niagara Movement

NAACP

The Crisis Magazine

Three Philosophical Zones

British Empiricism

Subjective idealism

Logical positivism

British empiricism

Knowledge derives from experience

Subjective idealism

A metaphysical doctrine that says minds and mental exist

No emphasis on the material world

Logical positivism

The idea that observational evidence is indispensable

The Duboisian Ethic

The view that he would apply the principles of the social sciences to the social and economic rise of the negro people

Sought to do for the issue of racial oppression the same as what Karl Marx did for class exploitation

The Atlanta Studies

One of the most significant bodies of scientific research on Black people at the beginning of the 20th century

Colonialism

A specific form of exploitation that developed with the expansion of Europe

The Berlin Conference

November 1884-February 1885

Called for by Portugal

Organized by German Chancellor, Otto Von Bismark

Instituted geometric boundaries that divided Africa in 50 irregular countries

"The Scramble for Africa" by Thomas Pakenham

The Berlin Doctrine and Acts

The doctrine of the spheres of influence by which Europe established its right to control the African coastline

The doctrine of effective occupation by which Europe established the idea that it could occupy an entire country by controlling the commerce along the coast

WEB DuBois

Born February 23,1868 in Great Barrington, MA

Death August 27 1963

Education: Fisk University

Scientific achievements laid the materialist foundation for the study of race and racial oppression

Organic thinking

Coined by Dubois

A scholar who is deeply concerned with social conditions, not abstractions and how their scholarly work can change the nature of society and transform the day to day reality of people who don't have a heard voice

Negritude Movement

a literary, political, and ideological movement founded in Paris in the 1930s by a group of students from France, the Caribbean, and Africa

Rejection of French colonial domination

Francophone

A french-speaking person especially in a place where more than one language is spoken

Hegemony

the political, economic, ideological, cultural or intellectual power exerted by a dominant group over another group

eurocentric idea falls under intellectual hegemony

Negritude's Basic Ideas

The Negritude writers found solidarity in a common Black identity as a rejection of French colonial denomination

believed that the shared black heritage of members of the African Diaspora was the best tool in fighting against French political and intellectual hegemony

The Three Tenets of Negritude

1. Denounces colonialism

2. Rejects Western domination

3. Promotes the acceptance of the Black self

Dr. Carter G. Woodson

father of Black history

argued against the exclusion of blacks in books and learning materials

Wrote "The miseducation of the Negro" and "The Negro in Our History"

Dr. Woodson's beliefs

the study of black history, using the tools of scholarly research and writing, could serve a dual purpose

could be used to counter racial chauvinism, which was used to rationalize the oppression of black people in america

the lack of a cultural identity was the direct result of a eurocentric school curriculum which overemphasized the contributions of whites at the expense of people of african descent

afrocentric idea rests on the assertion of the primacy of the african experience for african people

aims to give us our african victorious consciousness back. also means viewing the european voice as just one among many and not necessarily the wisest one

Formation

pre-colonial Africa

the time when continental African tradition, values, language, culture, motifs, folkways, mores, spirituality, worldview and cosmology were intact before whites came and destroyed it

Oppression

Colonial Africa

the time of invasion and disturbance characterized by six primary epochs

six epochs

colonialism

enslavement

jim crow

apartheid

de facto

de jure

Recovery & Transformation

the continued advancement towards a global African response to the six epochs

Relevant Education

education that's meaningful to the students, useful to the community and reflective of society