Unusual and Strange

To the Editors of The Crimson:

It is regrettable that The Crimson, primarily a student paper, occasionally allows itself to forego objective and fair reporting, the consequence of which is a total misrepresentation of student views and perspectives. Such was indeed the case with your article "Afro-Concentrators, Southern Disagree over Fundamentals" (April 17, 1976). By inverting the truth you make it appear that the students and some of the faculty want an easy department whose essence "is not characterized by the notion of a 'traditional' academic major;" You then attribute to the administration the philosophy that Afro should be organized as a "regular academic major" or that "it should be re-organized along the lines of a more traditional department like History, Economics or Government."

In this particular case it is in fact the students and members of the faculty who want a regular and normal department of respectable academic stature, whereas the administration seems to be determined to force Afro-American Studies in the direction of an unusual and strange committee-like program entitled "Department" for political reasons. It is a well-known fact that there are no regular Harvard departments that deal with just one segment of the American population. History, Economics, or Government are not departments organized to deal with just one segment of American society; they are departments created with the intention of dealing with their separate and respective branches of knowledge on a global basis, though as presently constituted they deal primarily with the Western world. It is therefore fallacious to assume that the issue is one of organizing Afro-American Studies along the lines of these disciplines or patterning it according to their prototype. What, indeed, does it mean to organize Afro-American Studies "like History, Economics, or Government"?

Now while History, Economics, and Government represent the disciplines that deal respectively with one aspect of (supposedly) the total human experience, (for instance, time and events, goods and services, power and authority), there are yet other regular and normal university departments that deal with the total culture of a single specific area or people. For instance, the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations or the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations deal with virtually every aspect of the respective cultures and civilizations of the areas and peoples they designate. For obvious reasons then, the students and members of the faculty contend that it is more logical and more appropriate to organize the Afro-American Studies Department along the lines of these other departments.

In this respect, students and many of the Afro faculty believe that the Afro-American Studies Department should be structured to deal with the languages and civilizations (literature, art, music, history, social studies) of all black people, especially in Africa, the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America on an equal basis. We contend that the history of black people goes back several thousands of years and that even the experience of the black people in the United States should be studied in that context. We resent being regarded as a people without roots whose worthwhile existence and experience do not extend beyond the period of slavery and colonialism, going back only four hundred years.

Outside the Afro-American Studies Department, Harvard has no experts who can even deal with the history of the mother continent of black people going beyond the period of slavery and colonialism. There are at least six Harvard departments that deal with languages and literatures of Europe, yet there is not one single department that treats seriously a single language spoken by black people. Afro-American is a black studies department that could at least partially serve these purposes. Beyond that, there is also a need to explore the Black experience in comparative perspective and to examine past and contemporary transnational linkages within the Black world.

Thus, only in its Pan-Africanist form is Afro-American Studies a viable department. We are the ones who want a regular and serious academic department! George Rivera   Chairman of the Concentrators   Afro-American Studies Department