The Future of Black Studies

Last semester, Professor Manning Marable of Columbia University delivered a lecture entitled “The Future of Black Studies” for the Dubois Institute at Harvard University. He raised a number of critiques of the academic discipline at this moment in time and offered a glimpse of what he believes is the solution to the “crisis” in African and African-American studies. With the impending, acrimonious departures of Tishman and Diker Professor of Sociology and of African and African-American Studies Lawrence D. Bobo and Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies Marcyliena Morgan, it is time to talk frankly about the state of the field at a higher level. Taking Marable’s critiques and ideas into account, a number of challenges need to be put forth to the intellectuals in the discipline. Harvard’s Dubois Institute, by virtue of the overwhelming talent and prestige of the department, as well as the media coverage garnered every time there is any tension between the department and the larger university, is in a particularly powerful position to answer these challenges and defend the discipline against renewed criticisms of its legitimacy as an academic discipline and its relevance in the larger world.

Marable’s first demand was that the black studies community redefine the history of black political thought and activism to situate it within the era of globalization—an extremely valid criticism that reflects a division in the discipline. Many black academics are caught within a paleo-liberal ideological framework, which does not reflect the rising tide of immigration or an understanding of contemporary global political economy. Much of the teaching of black political history is still couched in the binary conflict of integrationist versus separatist, which may be useful for middle school, but which is not particularly helpful in determining which ideological tools from past black intellectuals should be restructured to organize blacks in the present day. Pure separatism is now unfeasible, while full integration has largely failed, with the majority of black people in the U.S. living and learning in de facto segregation 50 years after Brown v. Board.

Moreover, with blacks in the third world occupying the lowest rungs in the global economy, we need to explore Marable’s idea of a “new racial domain” and see how structural racism, mass unemployment and incarceration, disease and disenfranchisement lower the life chances of blacks globally. Instead of disregarding the political thought of Marcus Garvey or Malcolm X as anachronistic or misguided, it might be time to resurrect the Pan-African focus in order to combat the most severe crisis in the African Diaspora since colonialism. We live in a world where those with power and resources are either flagrantly inattentive or maliciously disengaged from this plight because there is no joint intellectual and grassroots pressure. For example, we praise President Bush’s $15 billion AIDS initiative, but Europeans spend $11 billion a year on ice cream alone. For those not yet convinced, I offer the lack of sufficient response to the rampant genocide of black Africans in Sudan. Maybe we should tell the president that the Sudanese aren’t black, they’re just covered in oil.

Marable’s second demand was that black studies combine with a new model of civic engagement in order to enact change. To that end, I offer that faculty can impact the grassroots by organizing—drumroll please—students! The apathy with which many intellectuals credit our generation is a result of being bombarded with statistics about poverty and hopelessness without being offered mentorship as we seek to solve these dilemmas. With no meaningful guidance, many black students decide to major in law, business, or medicine with a minor in black magic—the study of how to be invisible to poor black people.

Many black academics are proficient at delivering depressing statistics, but they have not quite mastered the art of helping students organize solutions to such problems. Therefore, politically engaged black students are often at the mercy of left-wing activists who grapple with their own racial insecurities, washed-up black politicians and broad yet tenuous interethnic coalitions that disintegrate over cleavage issues. Few black intellectuals willingly offer themselves as mentors to existing student groups who are attempting to do exciting organizing around hip-hop politics or AIDS. As a result, black intellectuals appear aloof and students are more interested in Halo 2 than social justice.

Finally, Marable challenged the black studies community to create professional structures that facilitate better scholarship and respond to outside attempts to redefine its academic scope. This is key to the survival of black studies as an important and legitimate discipline. Over fifty years ago, Gunnar Myrdal scolded Americans for demanding objectivity in “legitimate” scholarship. Scholarship is legitimized when it identifies a problem or question and seeks to solve it. Black studies—an attempt to solve the problem of racism and racial inequality worldwide—has in many ways been moved away from the goal that defines it. While black intellectuals have attempted to remain ivory-tower-objective, the right wing has launched a multi-layered attack on the credibility of the whole field of ethnic studies, and the liberal establishment has attempted to recast the field as a producer of “diversity” and a facility for cultural tourism.

Without a strong, centralized defense by its leading scholars, the field is in danger of becoming irrelevant—both academically and politically—substantially undermining the intellectual foundation necessary for black progress. This is by no means an all-out assault on black academics, especially those here at Harvard who do brilliant and meaningful work that can benefit us all. But we can do better, if only because we have to.

Brandon M. Terry ’05 is a government and African and African American studies concentrator in Lowell House. His column appears on alternate Mondays.