A Black Studies Manifesto: Characteristics of a Black Studies Mind by Darlene Clark Hine

Context and Purpose of "A Black Studies Manifesto"

• Author: Darlene Clark Hine, a leading historian recognized for co-founding the field of black women's history. She is a Board of Trustees Professor of African American Studies and History at Northwestern University and has served as president of the Organization of American Historians and the Southern Historical Association.

• Background: Hine's extensive publication record includes seminal works such as The African-American Odyssey, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing Profession, 1890-1950, and A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America, among many others. She has received numerous fellowships and grants from prestigious institutions like the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

• Origin of the Essay: This manifesto originated as a presentation at the Yale University African American Studies: Past, Present, and Future conference in December 2011, organized by Professor Elizabeth Alexander.

• Motivation: For years, Hine contemplated the unique mind-set and distinguishing intellectual characteristics that cohere the discipline of African American Studies, especially since joining Northwestern University. The field, younger than traditional disciplines like history or sociology, often operates within their frameworks, leading to a neglect of its distinct intellectual objects and methods.

• Distinguishing the Discipline: Hine notes that just as a "historical mind" embraces "change over time" or a "legal mind" articulates critical issues in a specific way, Black Studies possesses its own unique intellectual characteristics.

• Definition of "The Black Studies Mind": Hine clarifies that this phrase does not refer to a physical or biological entity, but rather to "a set of historically sedimented and diverse practices and modes of thought" shared by practitioners.

• Urgency of the Manifesto:

  • Given Black Studies' historical existence outside mainstream academia, it is crucial to discuss, develop, and refine a set of protocols for its practice.

  • Failing to do so contributes to the institutional marginalization and the derision faced by Black, Africana, and African American Studies departments across the U.S., often accused of lacking "intellectual rigor."

  • Illustrative Attack: Hine cites Naomi Schaefer Riley's 2012 blog post, "The Most Persuasive Case for Eliminating Black Studies? Just Read the Dissertations," on The Chronicle of Higher Education website.

  • Riley attacked dissertation projects from Northwestern's African American Studies department without reading them, dismissing them as useless and intellectually unsound, and advocating for the elimination of all Black Studies departments.

  • This incident highlighted the ease with which the field can be attacked without any knowledge of its content, underscoring the necessity of this manifesto to counter institutional dissipation and intellectual attacks.

• Objective: The essay aims to delineate five characteristic topics and approaches that constitute "the black studies mind"—what scholars and students in the field teach, research, and aspire to convey.

Five Characteristics of the Black Studies Mind

1. Intersectionality

   • Core Concern: African American Studies investigates the interrelationship between distinct categories of identity.

   • Key Identity Markers: Race, gender, class, sexuality, and location (geographic regions, nation, space).

   • Analytical Power: Intersectionality enables the analysis of how these categories interact, strengthening or undermining each other, while maintaining awareness of their historical and geographical variability.

   • Historical Context: Although formalized as a concept in black feminism in the 1990 ext{s}, its operational presence can be observed in earlier Afro-Diasporic political organizations such as the Combahee River Collective, the Black Panther Party, the Pan-African Association, and the National Association of Colored Women.

2. Nonlinear Thinking

   • Temporal Orientation: Black Studies is deeply concerned with the past and actively invested in transforming the present to anticipate and foster a better, freer future.

   • Understanding Progress: It recognizes that revolutionary changes often reverse course and occur with interrupted irregularity. Therefore, comprehending previous historical eras is vital for developing strategies and goals to shape an improved future.

   • Challenging Illusions: Scholars in Black Studies must abandon the illusion of a steady, progressive march toward a perfect future, acknowledging that gains can be reversed at any time.

   • Continuous Vigilance: This necessitates continuous vigilance and dedicated investment in developing new methods for researching and understanding the dynamics and history of ongoing social struggles.

   • Hegemonic Power: It is equally urgent to grasp the fierce determination of hegemonic power and its extensive efforts to maintain control over resources and life chances.

   • Transdisciplinary Approach: Black Studies scholars are committed to sharing knowledge across various disciplines and specialized concentrations.

   • Enduring Struggle: The very existence of Black Studies signifies the ongoing nature of the struggle.

3. Diasporic Perspectives and Comparative Analyses

   • Global Scope: Black Studies scholars are not confined by any single geographical location; their purview encompasses the entire world.

   • Global Processes: It is essential to study black experiences within global processes of racial ordering across the Americas, Europe, Africa, the Pacific, and Asia.

   • Connections and Discontinuities: Scholars connect, draw parallels between, and chart discontinuities among people of color in diverse locations and across disparate times or eras.

   • Historical and Contemporary Experiences: The field explores all societies that have contended with historical or contemporary experiences of slavery, colonialism, segregation, and apartheid.

   • Post-Emancipation Struggles: Even after the formal abolition of slavery, black peoples have engaged in freedom struggles and wars of liberation, often confronting de jure forms of oppression, such as legal disfranchisement and segregation during the Jim Crow era.

   • Neo-colonialism and Colorism: The end of colonialism has frequently been followed by political and economic neo-colonialism and persistent vestiges of colonial racial stratification, such as colorism, making freedom struggles an ongoing imperative.

4. Oppression and Resistance

   • Mechanisms of Oppression: Black Studies scholars investigate and aim to understand the intricate mechanisms through which oppression operates.

   • Forms of Resistance: Simultaneously, they uncover the myriad forms of resistance employed by affected populations.

   • Examples of Resistance: This includes indigenous subaltern resistance, the development of specific counter-narratives, and distinctive cultural practices and belief systems designed to preserve collective and individual humanity in the face of genocidal conditions.

   • Incremental Change: Scholars meditate on and probe the significance of incremental change in the overthrow of oppression, injustice, exploitation, and the cessation of both psychological and physical terror.

   • Excavating Silences: They seek deeper understanding and the excavation of silences, gaps, and erasures concerning resistances, exploring not only outspoken performances but also veiled or dissembled practices.

   • Cultural Creations: The field unravels and reveals countless rituals and cultural creations that nurture and sustain oppositional consciousness, even when these activities appear to signal acquiescence, accommodation, or adaptation.

   • Living Proof: These activities actually indicate existing transformative realities and alternate futures, a fact exemplified by the continued flourishing of Black Studies under hostile conditions.

5. Solidarity

   • Embracing Solidarity: A Black Studies mind acknowledges and embraces solidarity with all individuals and groups subordinated by power relations.

   • Layered Connections: It analyzes the layered connections between anti-black racism, settler colonialism, xenophobia, and imperialism.

   • Inclusivity: This solidarity extends to other non-white and non-European groups, including Latinos, Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders, Native Americans, and Arab Americans.

   • Interdisciplinary Alliance: Black Studies scholars stand in solidarity with fellow scholars of ethnic, gender, and sexuality studies.

   • Intellectual and Political Imperative: A core imperative is to appreciate, support, and advance the interests and intellectual work of scholars and students who share histories of oppression and exclusion.

   • Academic Legitimacy: The field remains sensitive to others previously denied academic legitimacy who are engaged in creating and strengthening programs, departments, and centers that produce and promote new knowledge and sophisticated scholarship.

   • Avoiding Division: While committed to dissecting operations of oppression, Black Studies scholars must actively avoid overt and covert machinations that seek to divide and conquer through fostering unnecessary competitions over resources (e.g., institutional space, fellowships, professorships, budgets, course loads).

   • Comprehensive Analytical Framework: A Black Studies mind recognizes the imperative to study and theorize the intersection of race, class, gender, sexuality, geographical location, and culture within African diaspora populations globally.

   • Skill Development: It aims to develop intellectual orientations and essential skills for undertaking comparative analyses across time, space, language, and ethnicity.

   • Community Engagement: Beyond disciplines like history, literature, political science, culture, and gender studies, Black Studies must remain attuned to the needs and issues circulating in black communities, both near and far.

   • Future Directions: Toward this end, discussions are needed for creating new programs, institutes, and departments, as well as curricular changes within Black Studies departments. These changes should address needs of faculty, staff, administrators, and students.

   • Examples of Potential Centers/Conferences: Suggestions include African American Poverty Studies, The Carceral State, Where are the Jobs?, and Unions, Community, and the Social Contract.