Programs and departments of Black studies in the United States were first created in the 1960s and 1970s as a result of inter-ethnic student and faculty activism at many universities, sparked by a five-month strike for Black studies at San Francisco State University. In February 1968, San Francisco State hired sociologistNathan Hare to coordinate the first Black studies program and write a proposal for the first Department of Black Studies; the department was created in September 1968 and gained official status at the end of the five-month strike in the spring of 1969. The creation of programs and departments in Black studies was a common demand of protests and sit-ins by minority students and their allies, who felt that their cultures and interests were underserved by the traditional academic structures.[citation needed]
The academic discipline is known by various names.[24] Mazama (2009) expounds:
In the appendix to their recently published Handbook of Black Studies, Asante and Karenga note that "the naming of the discipline" remains "unsettled" (Asante & Karenga, 2006, p. 421). This remark came as a result of an extensive survey of existing Black Studies programs, which led to the editors identifying a multiplicity of names for the discipline: Africana Studies, African and African Diaspora Studies, African/Black World Studies, Pan-African Studies, Africology, African and New World Studies, African Studies–Major, Black World Studies, Latin American Studies, Latin American and Caribbean Studies, Black and Hispanic Studies, Africana and Latin American Studies, African and African-American Studies, Black and Hispanic Studies, African American Studies, Afro-American Studies, African American Education Program, Afro-Ethnic Studies, American Ethnic Studies, American Studies–African-American Emphasis, Black Studies, Comparative American Cultures, Ethnic Studies Programs, Race and Ethnic Studies.[25]
Okafor (2014) clarifies:
What appears to drive these distinctive names is a combination of factors: the composite expertise of their faculty, their faculty's areas of specialization, and the worldviews of the faculty that make up each unit. By worldview, I am referring to the question of whether the constituent faculty in a given setting manifests any or a combination of the following visions of our project:
a domestic vision of black studies that sees it as focusing exclusively on the affairs of only United States African Americans who descended from the generation of enslaved Africans
a diasporic vision of black studies that is inclusive of the affairs of all of African descendants in the New World—that is, the Americas: North America, South America and the Caribbean
a globalistic vision of the black studies—that is, a viewpoint that thinks in terms of an African world—a world encompassing African-origin communities that are scattered across the globe and the continent of Africa itself.[26]
Through development of the publication, The black population in Mexico (1946), Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán made way for the development of Afro-Mexican studies.[27]
A specific aim and objective of this interdisciplinary field of study is to help students broaden their knowledge of the worldwide human experience by presenting an aspect of that experience—the Black Experience—which has traditionally been neglected or distorted by educational institutions. Additionally, this course of study strives to introduce an Afro-centric perspective, including phenomena related to the culture. According to Robert Harris Jr, an emeritus professor of history at the Africana Studies Research Center at Cornell, there have been four stages in the development of Africana studies: from the 1890s until the Second World War, numerous organizations developed to analyze the culture and history of African peoples. In the second stage, the focus turned to African Americans. In the third stage, a bevy of newly conceived academic programs were established as Black studies.[28]
In the United States, the 1960s is known as the "Turbulent Sixties."[citation needed] During this time period, the nation experienced great social unrest, as citizens challenged the social order in radical ways. Many movements took place in the United States during this time period, including women's rights movement, labor rights movement, and the civil rights movement.[29]
The students at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) were witnesses to the Civil Rights Movement, and by 1964, they were thrust into activism.[30] On October 1, 1964, Jack Weinberg, a former graduate student, was sitting at a table where the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) was distributing literature encouraging students to protest against institutional racism. Police asked Weinberg to produce his ID to confirm that he was a student, but he refused to do so and was, therefore, arrested. In support of Weinberg, 3,000 students surrounded the police vehicle, and even used the car as a podium, from where they spoke about their right to engage in political protest on campus.[31] This impromptu demonstration was the first of many protests, culminating in the institutionalization of Black studies.
Two months later, students at UC Berkeley organized a sit-in at the Sproul Hall Administration building to protest an unfair rule that prohibited all political clubs from fundraising, excluding the democrat and republican clubs.[30] Police arrested 800 students. Students formed a "freedom of speech movement" and Mario Savio became its poetic leader, stating that "freedom of speech was something that represents the very dignity of what a human is."[31] The Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a well-connected and organized club, hosted a conference entitled "Black Power and its Challenges."[30] Black leaders, who were directly tied to then ongoing civil rights movements, spoke to a predominantly white audience about their respective goals and challenges. These leaders included Stokely Carmichael of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and James Bevel of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).
Educational conferences, like that of the SDS, forced the university to take some measures to correct the most obvious racial issue on campus—the sparse black student population.[32] In 1966, the school held its first official racial and ethnic survey, in which it was discovered that the "American Negro" represented 1.02% of the university population.[33] In 1968, the university instituted its Educational Opportunity Program (EOP), facilitated the increased minority student enrollment, and offered financial aid to minority students with high potential.[32] By 1970, there were 1,400 EOP students. As the minority student population increased, tension between activists clubs and minorities rose because minorities wanted the reigns of the movement that affected them directly. One student asserted that it was "backward to educate white people about Black Power when many black people are still uneducated on the matter.[34] "The members of the Afro-American Student Union (AASU) proposed an academic department called "Black Studies" in April 1968.[30] "We demand a program of 'Black Studies', a program that will be of and for black people. We demand to be educated realistically and that no form of education which attempts to lie to us, or otherwise mis-educate us will be accepted."[35]
AASU members asserted: "The young people of America are the inheritors of what is undoubtedly one of the most challenging, and threatening set of social circumstances that has ever fallen upon a generation of young people in history."[35] Everyone learns differently and teaching only one way is a cause for students to not want to learn, which eventually leads to dropping out. All students have their specialties, but teachers don't use that to help them in their learning community. Instead, they use a broad way of teaching just to get the information out.[36] AASU used these claims to gain ground on their proposal to create a Black studies department. Nathan Hare, a sociology professor at San Francisco State University, created what was known as the "A Conceptual Proposal for Black Studies" and AASU used Hare's framework to create a set of criteria.[37] A Black studies program was implemented by the UC Berkeley administration on January 13, 1969. In 1969, St. Clair Drake was named the first chair of the degree granting, Program in African and Afro-American Studies at Stanford University.[38] Many Black studies programs and departments and programs around the nation were created in subsequent years.[citation needed]
At University of California, Santa Barbara, similarly, student activism led to the establishment of a Black studies department, amidst great targeting and discrimination of student leaders of color on the University of California campuses. In the Autumn season of 1968, black students from UCSB joined the national civil rights movement to end racial segregation and exclusion of Black history and studies from college campuses. Triggered by the insensitivity of the administration and general campus life, they occupied North Hall and presented the administration with a set of demands. Such efforts led to the eventual creation of the Black studies department and the Center for Black Studies.[39]
Similar activism was happening outside of California. At Yale University, a committee, headed by political scientist, Robert Dahl, recommended establishing an undergraduate major in African-American culture, one of the first of such at an American university.[40]
When Ernie Davis, who was from Syracuse University, became the first African American to win the Heisman Trophy in college football, it renewed debates about race on college campuses in the country. Inspired by the Davis win, civil rights movement, and nationwide student activism, in 1969, black and white students, led by the Student African American Society (SAS), at Syracuse University, marched in front of the building at Newhouse and demanded for Black studies to be taught at Syracuse.[41] It existed as an independent, underfunded non-degree offering program from 1971 until 1979.[42] In 1979, the program became the Department of African American Studies, offering degrees within the College of Arts and Sciences.[42]
Unlike the other stages, Black studies grew out of mass rebellions of black college students and faculty in search of a scholarship of change.[citation needed] The fourth stage, the new name "Africana studies" involved a theoretical elaboration of the discipline of Black studies according to African cultural reclamation and disparate tenets in the historical and cultural issues of Africanity within a professorial interpretation of the interactions between these fields and college administrations.[28]
Thus, Africana studies reflected the mellowing and institutionalization of the Black studies movement in the course of its integration into the mainstream academic curriculum. Black studies and Africana studies differ primarily in that Africana studies focuses on Africanity and the historical and cultural issues of Africa and its descendants, while Black studies was designed to deal with the uplift and development of the black (African-American) community in relationship to education and its "relevance" to the black community. The adaptation of the term, "Africana studies", appears to have derived from the encyclopedic work of W. E. B. Du Bois and Carter G. Woodson. James Turner, who was recruited from graduate school at Northwestern on the heels of the student rebellions of 1969, first used the term to describe a global approach to Black studies and name the "Africana Studies and Research Center" at Cornell, where he acted as the founding director.[43]
Studia Africana, subtitled "An International Journal of Africana Studies", was published by the Department for African American Studies at the University of Cincinnati in a single issue in 1977 (an unrelated journal called Studia Africana is published by the Centro de Estudios Africanos, in Barcelona, since 1990). The International Journal of Africana Studies (ISSN 1056-8689) has been appearing since 1992, published by the National Council for Black Studies.
In 1988 and 1990, publications on African-American studies were funded by the Ford Foundation, and the African-American academics who produced the publications used traditional disciplinary orthodoxies, from outside of African-American studies, to analyze and evaluate the boundaries, structure, and legitimacy of African-American studies.[46] To the detriment of the field, an abundance of research on African American studies has been developed by academics who are not within the discipline of African American studies.[46] Rather, the academics, and the scholarship they have produced about African American studies, has been characterized as bearing an "Aryan hegemonic worldview."[46] It has been argued that due to a staffing shortage in the field of African American studies, academics in the field, who are trained in traditional fields, carry with them presumptions of the primacy of their field of training's viewpoints, which tends to result in the marginalization of the African phenomena that are the subjects of study and even the field of African American studies at-large.[46] Consequently, matters of development of theory as well as the development of historical and African consciousness frequently go overlooked.[46] As the focus of African American studies is the study of the African diaspora and Africa, including the problems of the African diaspora and Africa, Conyers claims that this makes the theory of Afrocentricity increasingly relevant.[46]
The National Council for Black Studies has also recognized the problem of academics, who have been trained in fields such as education, economics, history, philosophy, political science, psychology, and sociology – fields outside of African American studies – and are committed to their disciplinary training, yet are not able to recognize the shortcomings of their training, as it relates to the field of African American studies that they are entering into.[46] Furthermore, such academics, who would also recognize themselves as experts in the discipline of African American studies, would also attempt to assess the legitimacy of Africology – done so, through analysis based on critical rhetoric rather than based on pensive research.[46][who?]
Following the Black studies movement and Africana studies movement, Molefi Kete Asante identifies the Africological movement as a subsequent academic movement.[47] Asante authored the book Afrocentricity, in 1980.[47] Within the book, Asante used the term "Afrology" as the name for the interdisciplinary field of Black studies, and defined it as "the Afrocentric study of African phenomena."[47] Later, Winston Van Horne changed Asante's use of the term "Afrology" to "Africology."[47] Asante then went on to use his earlier definition for "Afrology" as the definition for his newly adopted term, "Africology".[47] Systematic Africology,[46][1] which is a research method in the field of Black studies that was developed by Asante,[1] utilizes the theory of Afrocentricity to analyze and evaluate African phenomena.[46] In an effort to shift Black studies away from its interdisciplinary status toward disciplinary status, Asante recommended that Afrocentricity should be the meta-paradigm for Black studies and that the new name for Black studies should be Africology; this is intended to shift Black studies away from having a "topical definition" of studying African peoples, which is shared with other disciplines, toward having a "perspectival definition" that is unique in how African peoples are studied – that is, the study of African peoples, through a centered perspective, which is rooted in and derives from the cultures and experiences of African peoples.[48] By doing so, as Ama Mazama indicates, this should increase how relevant Black studies is and strengthen its disciplinary presence.[48]
Caribbean
Among English-speaking countries of the Caribbean, scholars educated in the United States and Britain added considerably to the development of Black studies.[7] Scholars, such as Fitzroy Baptiste, Richard Goodridge, Elsa Goveia, Allister Hinds, Rupert Lewis, Bernard Marshall, James Millette, and Alvin Thompson, added to the development of Black studies at the University of the West Indies campuses in Barbados, Jamaica, and Trinidad.[7]
Cuba
During the early 1900s, Fernando Ortiz pioneered the emerging field of Afro-Cuban studies.[49] On January 16, 1937, the Society for Afro-Cuban Studies was established.[49] Afro-Cuban Studies (Estudios Afrocubanos) is the academic journal for the Society for Afro-Cuban Studies (SEAC/Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos).[49] In 1939, Rómulo Lachatañeré's academic work appeared in a volume of this journal.[49]
Dominican Republic
In 1967, Carlos Larrazábal Blanco authored, Los Negros Y La Esclavitud En Santo Domingo, which is considered to be a foundational academic work in Afro-Dominican studies.[50] Even in areas of the Dominican Republic with many Afro-Dominicans and where Afro-Dominican culture is predominant, there has been an ongoing challenge in Afro-Dominican studies to find linguistic evidence of a remnant Afro-Dominican language.[51]
Haiti
Lorimer Denis, Francois Duvalier, and Jean Price-Mars, as founders of the Bureau of Ethnology and leading figures in the Noirisme movement in Haiti, were also influential in the publishing of the foundational Afro-Haitian studies journal, Les Griots.[52] One of the most influential academics in Afro-Haitian studies is René Piquion.[53]
Puerto Rico
As of 2019, Afro-Puerto Rican studies is not offered as a degree program by the University of Puerto Rico.[54] Numerous academic publications, such as Arrancando Mitos De Raiz: Guia Para La Ensenanza Antirracista De La Herencia Africana En Puerto Rico, were scholarly works that established Isar Godreau as a leading academic in Afro-Puerto Rican Studies.[55]
Central America
Costa Rica
The Executive branch created a law to establish a Committee for Afro-Costa Rican Studies, as one, among other laws, to increase the level of inclusion of Afro-Costa Ricans in Costa Rica.[56]
Guatemala
Christopher H. Lutz authored, Santiago de Guatemala, 1541–1773, which is considered to be one of the foundational literatures of Afro-Guatemalan studies.[57]
Honduras
Due to a history of scarce resources and anti-black racism, Afro-Hondurans have largely been excluded from academic publications about Honduras; consequently, Afro-Honduran studies has remained limited in its formal development.[58]
Panama
In March 1980, along with the Panamanian government, the Afro-Panamanian Studies Center hosted the Second Congress on Black Culture in the Americas.[59]
South America
Argentina
Since the 1980s, Afro-Argentine studies has undergone renewed growth.[60]
In 1980, Abdias Nascimento gave a presentation in Panama of his scholarship on Kilombismo at the 2nd Congress of Black Culture in the Americas.[8] His scholarship on Kilombismo detailed how the economic and political affairs of Africans throughout the Americas contributed to how they socially organized themselves.[61] Afterward, Nascimento went back to Brazil and began institutionalization of Africana studies in 1981.[8] While at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo, Nascimento developed the Afro-Brazilian Studies and Research Institute (IPEAFRO).[8] A course for professors was provided by IPEAFRO between 1985 and 1995.[8]
Chile
From the 1920s to the 1950s, publications that included the presence of Afro-Chileans were not systematized, and, from the 1960s to the 1980s, publications continued to group Afro-Chileans with other groups.[62] Since the 2000s, there has been increasing systematization and a more formal development of Afro-Chilean studies, along with a greater focus on Afro-Chileans and the recovery of Afro-Chilean cultural heritage.[62]
Colombia
Scholars, such as Rogerio Velásquez, Aquiles Escalante, José Rafael Arboleda, and Thomas Price, were forerunners in the development of Afro-Colombian studies in the 1940s and 1950s.[63] In the 1960s, as social science programs became incorporated into university institutions, contributions from anthropologists and social scientists added to its emergence.[63] Following the promulgation of the Colombian Constitution, particularly Article 55, in 1991,[63] Law 70 in 1993,[63][10][11] and Decree 804 by the Ministry of Education in 1995,[10][11] the elements for Afro-Colombian studies began to come together,[63] and historic discrimination of Afro-Colombians was able to begin being addressed, with the development of national educational content about Afro-Colombians and Africa.[64][10][11] At the University City of Bogotá, of the National University of Colombia, the Afro-Colombian Studies Group developed and established a training program in Afro-Colombian studies for primary and secondary school teachers.[64] In February 2002, a continuing education diploma program in Afro-Colombian studies was developed and began to be offered at the University of Cauca in Belalcázar, Caldas.[65][66][67] At the Pontifical Xavierian University, there is a master's degree program in Afro-Colombian studies.[68][69] There is also a study abroad program for Afro-Colombian students and African-American students existing between the Afro-Colombian studies program at the Pontifical Xavierian University in Colombia and African-American studies programs at historically black colleges and universities in the United States.[69]
Ecuador
Afro-Ecuadorians initiated the development of the Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies in the late 1970s, which served as a means of organizing academic questions relating to Afro-Ecuadorian identity and history.[12] Though it dissolved in the early 1980s, by the 1990s, organizations that followed in the example of the Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies ushered in the development of the Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducación program at the National High School, in Chota Valley, Ecuador, and a master's degree program in Afro-Andean Studies at the Simón Bolívar Andean University (UASB), in Quito, Ecuador.[12] With the promulgation of Article 84 of the 1998 Constitution of Ecuador, gave formal recognition was given to Afro-Ecuadorian Etnoeducación.[12] Juan Garcia, who was one of the founders of the Center of Afro-Ecuadorian Studies, is a leading scholar in Afro-Ecuadorian studies and has contributed considerably to the development of the programs in Chota Valley and Quito.[12]
While the presence of Afro-Peruvian studies may not be strong in Peru,[10][11] the body of scholarship is undergoing growth.[71] There have been efforts to organize the elements of Afro-Peruvian studies in Peru, such as by LUNDU, which organized an international conference for Afro-Peruvian studies in Peru[72] on November 13, 2009.[73] During this LUNDU-organized conference, Luis Rocca, who co-founded the National Afro-Peruvian Museum, and is also a historian, presented on his research regarding Afro-Peruvians.[72] A university student group focused on Afro-Peruvian studies was also created near San Juan de Lurigancho, Lima, Peru.[74] Additionally, there has been some scholarship in Afro-Peruvian studies developed in the United States[75] and a panel on Afro-Peruvian studies at a conference hosted on December 11, 2019, by the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research in the United States.[76]
Uruguay
Since 1996, the amount of scholarship of Afro-Uruguayan studies has increased as a result of increased global focus on Afro-Latin American studies.[77]
Venezuela
The curriculum for Afro-Venezuelan studies was developed at Universidad Politécnica Territorial de Barlovento Argelia Laya (UPTBAL), in Higuerote, Barlovento, by Alejandro Correa.[13] In 2006, Afro-Epistemology and African Culture were formally developed as the initial courses for students in this curriculum.[13]
Following the rise and decline of Black British Cultural Studies between the early 1980s and late 1990s, Black studies in the United States reinvigorated Black Critical Thought in the United Kingdom.[78]Kehinde Andrews, who initiated the development of the Black Studies Association in the United Kingdom as well as the development of a course in Black studies at Birmingham City University,[78] continues to advocate for the advancement of the presence of Black studies in the United Kingdom.[5][6]
Research methods
African Self-Consciousness
Kobi K. K. Kambon developed a research method and psychological framework, known as African Self-Consciousness, which analyzes the states and changes of the African mind.[1]
Africana Womanism
Delores P. Aldridge developed a research method, which analyzes from the viewpoint of black women, known as Africana Womanism.[1] Rather than the importance of the individual (e.g., needs, wants) being considered greater than the family unit, the importance of the family unit is regarded as greater than the individual.[1]
Afrocentricity is an academic theory and approach to scholarship that seeks to center the experiences and peoples of Africa and the African diaspora within their own historical, cultural, and sociological contexts.[79][80][81][82] First developed as a systematized methodology by Molefi Kete Asante in 1980, he drew inspiration from a number of African and African diaspora intellectuals including Cheikh Anta Diop, George James, Harold Cruse, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois.[79] The Temple Circle,[83][84] also known as the Temple School of Thought,[84] Temple Circle of Afrocentricity,[85] or Temple School of Afrocentricity,[86] was an early group of Africologists during the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to further develop Afrocentricity, which is based on concepts of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation.[83]
Black Male Studies primarily focuses on the study of Black men and boys.[87] Its research focus includes the study of Black manhood and Black masculinity, and it draws from disciplines such as history, philosophy, and sociology.[87] Black Male Studies uses a Black male-centered paradigm designed to critique past and present gender studies publications on Black males as well as centers and contends with the problem of anti-Black misandry ("disdain for Black men and boys").[88] Past and present gender studies publications tend to carry assumptions of Black men and boys being criminals and assailants of Black women and white women.[88] Consequently, past and present gender studies publications tend to contain paradigms, theories, and narratives that are grounded in anti-Black misandry, along with a theoretically constructed language of hypermasculinity, and tend to be ill-equipped at understanding Black males as victims.[88] The past and present vulnerability of Black males, ranging from rape, to sexual abuse, to death, which tends to be overlooked and downplayed by rhetoric about hypermasculinity, underscores the need to develop new language, narratives, and theories for understanding Black males.[88]
Blues Culture
James B. Stewart developed the research method and methodological framework, known as Blues Culture, which examines the traits (e.g., versatility, vibration) of Africana culture utilizing various means from an assortment of disciplines (e.g., economics, history, sociology).[1]
W. E. B. DuBois developed the research method and conceptual framework, known as Double Consciousness, to analyze how Africana people (and phenomena) exist in a dual racialized (black-white) world and subsequently develop a dual consciousness.[1] Rather than succumb to various forms of external pressure (e.g., assimilation, harassment, prejudice, racism, sexism, surveillance), Africana people discover how to steer through them.[1]
Four Basic Tasks of the Black Studies Scholar
James Turner developed the research method and social scientific framework, known as Four Basic Tasks of the Black Studies Scholar, which investigates the problems that affect the experiences of Africana peoples and addresses four related criteria (e.g., defend, disseminate, generate, preserve new knowledge) utilizing various means of examination from an assortment of disciplines (e.g., conceptual history, economics, political science, sociology).[1]
Interpretative Analysis
Charles H. Wesley developed the research method of Interpretative Analysis, which utilizes a structural or cultural system to gather, analyze, and interpret data.[1]
Maulana Karenga drew from the concept of Nguzo Saba to develop his research method, known as Kawaida Theory.[1] Seven factors (e.g., creative production, ethos, history, religion, economic organization, political organization, social organization) are utilized to examine the Africana experience, which is set within a Pan-Africanist context.[1]
Miseducation of the Negro
Carter G. Woodson developed the research method of and conceptual framework for the Miseducation of the Negro, which analyzes and assesses the history and culture of Africana people, and notates their notable loss of such is due to Africana people being decentered from their own historic and cultural contexts.[1]
Nigrescence
William E. Cross Jr. developed the research method, known as Nigrescence, as a psychological framework; with the framework, he analyzes Africana culture and the behavioral dimensions of its psycho-adaptive traits as well as analyzes a timeline of Black culture (which is composed of five steps).[1]
Optimal Worldview of Psychology
Linda Meyers developed the research method, known as the Optimal Worldview of Psychology, which utilizes investigates the African mind through a cultural framework (e.g., surface-level structure of culture, deep structure of culture); its sub-optimal viewpoint highlights the demerits of an African mind that has an assimilated mentality and its optimal viewpoint corresponds with an African mind that has an Africana mentality.[1]
Paradigm of Unity
Abdul Alkalimat developed the research method known as the Paradigm of Unity, which has a considerable focus on relationships between social classes, via Marxist analysis, and utilizes gender as a determining factor as well as utilizes an undefined notion of Afrocentricity.[1][89]
Shared Authority
Michael Frisch developed the research method, known as Shared Authority, to investigate orature, which recognizes the personhood (e.g., subject, agency) and experiences of the Africana individual.[1] Through this methodological recognition, information that may not have been captured in prior publications is able to be optimally acquired.[1]
Social Legitimacy
Winston Van Horn developed a research method and methodological framework (composed of three steps), known as Social Legitimacy, which analyzes the experiences of Africana peoples and Africana phenomena in their political and sociological contexts.[1]
Cheikh Anta Diop drew from anthropology, archaeology, history, and sociology to develop a research method and cultural metric, known as Two Cradle Theory, to assess the differences between African and European cultures – between what are characterized and viewed as the southern cradle and the northern cradle.[1]
Ujimaa
James L. Conyers, Jr. drew from the concept of Nguzo Saba to develop the research method known as Ujimaa; the methodological framework draws from philosophy, sociology, and conceptual history, with the understanding that culture is utilized to analyze and assess Pan-Africanist phenomena from around the world, and is utilized to analyze social responsibility and the work of the collective.[1]
Recent challenges and criticisms
One of the major setbacks with Black studies programs or departments is that there is a lack of financial resources available to students and faculty.[90] Many universities and colleges around the United States provided Black studies programs with small budgets and, therefore, it is difficult for the department to purchase materials and hire staff. Due to the budget allocated to Black studies being limited, some faculty are jointly appointed, therefore, causing faculty to leave their home disciplines to teach a discipline with which they may not be familiar. Budgetary issues make it difficult for Black studies programs and departments to function and to promote themselves.[91]
Racism, perpetrated by many administrators, is alleged to hinder the institutionalization of Black studies at major universities.[90] As with the case of UC Berkeley, most of the Black studies programs across the country were instituted because of the urging and demanding of black students to create the program. In many instances, black students also called for the increased enrollment of black students and financial assistance to these students.[90] Also seen in the case of UC Berkeley is the constant demand to have such a program, but place the power of control in the hands of black people. The idea was that Black studies could not be "realistic" if it were taught by someone who was not accustomed to the black experience. On many campuses, directors of Black studies have little to no autonomy—they do not have the power to hire or grant tenure to faculty. On many campuses, an overall lack of respect for the discipline has caused instability for the students and for the program.
In the past thirty years, there has been a steady decline of Black studies scholars.[90]
Universities and colleges with Black studies departments, programs, and courses
Electronic Journal of Africana Bibliography – coverage includes any aspect of Africa, its peoples, their homes, cities, towns, districts, states, countries, regions, including social, economic sustainable development, creative literature, the arts, and the Diaspora.
Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art – focuses on publishing critical work that examines the newly developing field of contemporary African and African Diaspora art within the modernist and postmodernist experience, thereby contributing to the intellectual dialogue on world art and the discourse on internationalism and multiculturalism in the arts.
Afrocentrism is a worldview that is centered on the history of people of African descent or a biased view that favors it over non-African civilizations. It is in some respects a response to Eurocentric attitudes about African people and their historical contributions. It seeks to counter what it sees as mistakes and ideas perpetuated by the racist philosophical underpinnings of Western academic disciplines as they developed during and since Europe's Early Renaissance as justifying rationales for the enslavement of other peoples, in order to enable more accurate accounts of not only African but all people's contributions to world history. Afrocentricity deals primarily with self-determination and African agency and is a pan-African point of view for the study of culture, philosophy, and history.
Pan-Africanism is a worldwide movement that aims to encourage and strengthen bonds of solidarity between all indigenous peoples and diasporas of African ancestry. Based on a common goal dating back to the Atlantic slave trade, the movement extends beyond continental Africans with a substantial support base among the African diaspora in the Americas and Europe.
Cheikh Anta Diop was a Senegalese historian, anthropologist, physicist, and politician who studied the human race's origins and pre-colonial African culture. Diop's work is considered foundational to the theory of Afrocentricity, though he himself never described himself as an Afrocentrist. The questions he posed about cultural bias in scientific research contributed greatly to the postcolonial turn in the study of African civilizations.
Music education is a field of practice in which educators are trained for careers as elementary or secondary music teachers, school or music conservatory ensemble directors. Music education is also a research area in which scholars do original research on ways of teaching and learning music. Music education scholars publish their findings in peer-reviewed journals, and teach undergraduate and graduate education students at university education or music schools, who are training to become music teachers.
Afrocentricity is an academic theory and approach to scholarship that seeks to center the experiences and peoples of Africa and the African diaspora within their own historical, cultural, and sociological contexts. First developed as a systematized methodology by Molefi Kete Asante in 1980, he drew inspiration from a number of African and African diaspora intellectuals including Cheikh Anta Diop, George James, Harold Cruse, Ida B. Wells, Langston Hughes, Malcolm X, Marcus Garvey, and W. E. B. Du Bois. The Temple Circle, also known as the Temple School of Thought, Temple Circle of Afrocentricity, or Temple School of Afrocentricity, was an early group of Africologists during the late 1980s and early 1990s that helped to further develop Afrocentricity, which is based on concepts of agency, centeredness, location, and orientation.
Molefi Kete Asante is an American professor and philosopher. He is a leading figure in the fields of African-American studies, African studies, and communication studies. He is currently a professor in the Department of Africology at Temple University, where he founded the PhD program in African-American Studies. He is president of the Molefi Kete Asante Institute for Afrocentric Studies.
Afrology is a scientific study of the organization of the contemporary social structures of Africa. It places in the heart of African social change the notion of identity.
African studies is the study of Africa, especially the continent's cultures and societies. The field includes the study of Africa's history, demography, culture, politics, economy, languages, and religion. A specialist in African studies is often referred to as an "africanist".
Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African-American Experience edited by Henry Louis Gates and Anthony Appiah is a compendium of Africana studies including African studies and the "Pan-African diaspora" inspired by W. E. B. Du Bois' project of an Encyclopedia Africana. Du Bois envisioned "an Encyclopedia Africana," which was to be "unashamedly Afro-Centric but not indifferent to the impact of the outside world."
National Council for Black Studies (NCBS) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of the field of Africana/African American/Black Studies. It is a not-for-profit organization established in 1975. The National Council for Black Studies was founded by Bertha Maxwell-Roddey, the founding director of the Black Studies/Afro-American and African Studies Program at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.
Africana philosophy is the work of philosophers of African descent and others whose work deals with the subject matter of the African diaspora. The name does not refer to a particular philosophy, philosophical system, method, or tradition. Rather, Africana philosophy is a third-order, metaphilosophical, umbrella-concept used to bring organizing oversight to various efforts of philosophizing. Africana philosophy is a part of and developed within the field of Africana studies.
Afrocentric education refers to a pedagogical approach to education designed to empower people of the African diaspora with educational modes in contact and in line with the cultural assumptions common in their communities. A central premise behind it is that many Africans have been subjugated by having their awareness of themselves limited and by being indoctrinated with ideas that work against them and their cultures.
Black psychology, also known as African-American psychology and African/Black psychology, is a scientific field that focuses on how people of African descent know and experience the world. The field, particularly in the United States, largely emerged as a result of the lack of understanding of the psychology of Black people under traditional, Westernized notions of psychology. Overall, the field combines perspectives from both Black studies and traditional psychology encapsulating a range of definitions and approaches while simultaneously proposing its own framework of understanding.
Omar Hamid Ali is an American historian of the African diaspora who specializes in the history of independent black political movements in the United States, Islam in the Indian Ocean world, and black resistance to slavery in Latin America.
Edward Warren Crosby, was an African-American professor/administrator emeritus, in the Department of Pan-African Studies at Kent State University (KSU). As a pioneer in the field of Black education his most notable accomplishments include the establishment of Black History Month and the Department of Pan-African Studies at KSU. The Institute for African American Affairs (1969) and the Center of Pan-African Culture (1970) were two of the first institutions of their kind to be established at institutions of higher education.
VèVè Amasasa Clark was an author and scholar who coined the phrase "diaspora literacy". She was a professor of African American Studies at the University of California, Berkeley from 1991 until her death in 2007.
Kobi Kazembe Kambon was a black educator and psychologist. His research has been particularly influential in areas relating to African (Black) Psychology, cultural survival in the face of cultural oppression, and mental health. A former National President of the Association of Black Psychologists (ABPsi), Kambon published over 60 scholarly articles, and wrote five books, including two textbooks that are frequently used in Psychology and Black Studies courses across the country.
Rites and Reason Theatre is a theater within the Africana Studies department of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. It was founded in 1970 by Professor George Houston Bass, and Professor Rhett Jones, is one of the longest-running continuously producing black theaters in the United States. Writers for the theater have included Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, and Adrienne Kennedy. The theatre serves to develop theatrical and visual performance works that articulate and understand the expansive African Diaspora.
Stephanie Y. Evans is a full professor and former director of the Institute for Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies at Georgia State University. Until 2019, she served as the Chair of Clark Atlanta University's African American Studies, Africana Women's Studies, and History (AWH) Department.
Nah Dove is an author, lecturer and scholar in African-American studies. She has lived in Ghana, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Canada, the UK, and in the US, where she is an assistant professor instruction in the department of Africology and African American studies at the college of liberal arts, Temple University, Philadelphia.
↑ Kelly, Jason (November–December 2010). "Lorenzo Dow Turner, PhD'26". The University of Chicago® Magazine. Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect (1949) ... was considered not only the defining work of Gullah language and culture but also the beginning of a new field, Black studies. 'Until then it was pretty much thought that all of the African knowledge and everything had been erased by slavery. Turner showed that was not true,' [curator Alcione] Amos says. 'He was a pioneer. He was the first one to make the connections between African Americans and their African past.
↑ "Revolutionary Minds". S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, Syracuse University. Archived from the original on October 4, 2011. Retrieved November 13, 2011.
↑ Bryant, Sherwin K.; Vinson III, Ben; O'Toole, Rachel Sarah (Feb 15, 2012). "Introduction". Africans to Spanish America: Expanding the Diaspora. University of Illinois Press. p.19. ISBN978-0-252-09371-5. S2CID160329038.
↑ Alkalimat, Abdul. "Toward A Paradigm of Unity in Black Studies", in Nathaniel Norment, Jr. (ed.),The African American Studies Reader, Durham, North Carolina: Carolina Academic Press, 2001.
1 2 3 4 Phillips, M. (June 22, 2010). "Black Studies: Challenges and Critical Debates". Western Journal of Black Studies. 34 (2): 273–274. S2CID140445922.
Kendi, Ibram X. The Black Campus Movement: Black Students and the Racial Reconstitution of Higher Education, 1965–1972. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
Rooks, Noliwe M. White Money/Black Power: The Surprising History of African American Studies and the Crisis of Race in Higher Education. Beacon Press, 2007.
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