THE AAAAS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I appreciated the review which Mr. Lerner made of the AAAAS publication, The Harvard Journal of Negro Affairs.

However, because the distracting accusation that our membership is, or intends to be, "racially exclusive" continues to preface even, sympathetic discussion of our organization and its activities, I would like to respond to that accusation. Because our group does not have a simplistic, codified ideology--and since it is not our purpose to establish one--this opinion is personal and is offered as another "refreshingly radical viewpoint" for consideration. I do not believe that the AAAAS is "racially exclusive."

We are organized to affirm, to assert in ways that are "refreshingly radical," and to interrogate further a group of cultural and historical aspirations which we believe we share. This, in a world and a country whose affairs are as confused as ours, is an arduous, conflicted, and often painful task. The rational task is made all the more difficult because, when we dare to think that we might be coming to terms with others as human beings, we discover that basic terms of our discussion--the "racial" definitions that have brought us thus far through history--themselves divide us emotionally into opposing camps.

This issue of "race" has too often become a falsified and un-humanizing issue. In our opinions of individuals we may ignore "racial" distinctions. But when we come to think of ourselves in the flux of history and in the sense that we are a function of groupings of mankind, then we must honestly admit the polarity of our feelings. Therefore, however erroneously "race" may have become a major theme of recent history, it does have practical significance; and it must be faced carefully and creatively--if we are ever to undo its consequences. The selection of the terms, African and Afro-American--rather than black, or colored, or Negro, or non-Caucasian, or non-white, or ...--may be interpreted as an attempt at a redefinition that would be neither necessarily racially exclusive nor inclusive, but to which the idea of "race," if applied, would be at best tangential.

Africa is no racially homogeneous continent; Afro-America includes all three American where miscegenation has been frequent; and not all New World "Negroes" consider themselves Afro-American. We are organized to examine a certain broad, though emotionally bounded, set of questions and images of our peoples' condition. If the proportion of "pure Caucasians" in the Association is displeasing to those who believe the myths of race, this circumstance is more a function of a) the paucity of "white" Africans on campus and b) the preference of some "white Afro-Americans to dissociate into other cultural groups, than it is of their premeditated exclusion.

The membes of these groups, on this campus as well as around the earth, no longer can avoid making contact and exchange with each other. On one dimension, the plurality of cultures represented is what makes interaction with people at Harvard and Radcliffe so exciting. We, Afro-Americans, in an especially crucial sense, have an opportunity to put the manifold variety of our political and cultural identifications into fertile and forward-looking combinations. We shall not hesitate to do so. And, as if it needs to be stated, membership in the Association in no fashion implies anyone's isolation from Harvard's broader resources.

Some students have asked why the AAAAS is not active in "civil rights" events? Some of our members are. Whether we are Black Nationalists? Whether we favor separation, integration, Pan-Africanism, socialism, revolution, exodus to...? Mr. Lerner remarked of the refreshing diversity of our viewpoints in his review of The Journal (whose contributors were neither racially nor ideologically of one complexion). This is but one reflection of the breadth and vitality of our commitment to the fullest examination of our peoples' problems. Our organization for that purpose, in this liberal academic community, should be judged by its practical fruits. James W. Wiley '65-1