The Role of Afro-American Scholarship

Professor Orlando Patterson has asked the right question of Afro-American Studies: "Is it to be a new and exciting intellectual venture different, to be sure, in subject and orientation but still very much a part of the Harvard intellectual community with all this implies in terms of standards of excellence and the universalistic norms of the university community?"

The answer to this question requires clarity about the primary intellectual principle of a university applied to any area of inquiry. Even though the study of Afro-American experience may reveal different facts compared with other subjects, such inquiry must be objectively pursued.

It is true that subject matter does change the contours of inquiry, but such differences stem rather from the nature of the phenomenon than from the suseptibility of the subject to scientific method or clear interpretation. But objective inquiry must employ Ralph Ellison's admonition to the Social Sciences: "Watch out, Jack, there're people living under here."

The goals of scholarship should also include a search for value: a search for "the good" in classical terms. Claims that the Afro-American experience is unique, must be tested against Ellison's reminder that the black experience is a variant of the human experience. It comprises the reaction of men and women to unforgettable racism, to terror, urbanization, the bomb, and to Americanization.

As culture and politics, this experience is shaped by a "network of connections" that reciprocally binds this experience to the larger society. Through the work of Professor Martin Kilson in Afro-American political development, we are beginning to understand, for example, that oppression of blacks assumed a crazy-quilt pattern in cities with sectors of the black population securing advantage and mobility because of status, class, and the presence or absence of the political machine.

Given the nature of black experience no single academic discipline will provide the training to understand the complexity of the subject. Economics, politics, poetic expression, the history of ideas, sociology and so on intersect when simply describing aspects of this experience. I associate myself with the view that Afro-American Studies is an interdisciplinary field of inquiry, not an academic discipline. Before a student is able fully to concentrate in the subject, a thorough grounding in an established discipline should be required. From the student's point of view, only then will he or she be prepared to pursue professional school with a discipline under control or be given the necessary rational tools to approach any field of inquiry. The role of the central subject is to provide the point of reference as one makes an approach to the field through different disciplines in the social sciences or humanities.

Many will approach this subject today expecting it to be an arm of Black Militancy. This is to ask this subject to perform a function inappropriate in an academic institution. Such a Department must be staffed by scholars who can get on with the job of pushing back the frontiers of this subject. A faculty of scholars protected by canons of academic freedom should exercise scholarly authority in such a Department. And what about the role of students, who have won the right to help govern Afro-American Studies Departments at Harvard and other universities? Certainly undergraduate students should have informal occasion to discuss the concentration with tutors and senior faculty in this or any Department. On such occasion the best idea ought to carry the day. But students should not be governors of a Department. For the Scholar in this field, Kelly Miller's Appreciation of Carter Woodson, a black historian, should be a guide: "The largest measure of our admiration is due to the Negro (or white scholar) who can divest himself of momentary passion and prejudice, and with self-detachment, devote his powers to searching out and sifting the historical facts growing out of race relationship...." We all have a stake in a program of excellence, more likely insured by such standards. Indirectly such a program may provide an antidote to the proclivity of Americans to strangle each other with racial prejudices.