Controversial Blackness: The Historical
Desarrollo & Future Trajectory of
African American Studies
Martha Biondi
The election of Barack Obama as president of
the United States has prompted some observers to
assert that the nation has overcome its history of
white supremacy and moved into a “post-racial”
era, making continued attention to race and rac-
ism passé and unnecessary. Radio and television
host Tavis Smiley posed this provocation to his
guests in a 2009 radio special on the fortieth an-
niversary of African American studies in Ameri-
can colleges and universities. He asked, is African
American studies still necessary in the age of Oba-
mamá? Eddie Glaude, Elizabeth Alexander, Greg
Carr, and Tricia Rose–chairs of African Ameri-
can studies departments at, respectivamente, Príncipe-
ton University, Yale University, Howard Univer-
sity, and Brown University1–each articulated
important themes in the intellectual tradition
of African American studies. De este modo, their discus-
sion is a useful lens through which to explore
key themes in the historical development and
future trajectory of the ½eld.
Eddie Glaude and Greg Carr captured two truths
about the history of African American studies.
Glaude noted its origin in black student activism
of the 1960s. The upsurge of campus activism in
1968 y 1969 was a critical component of the
broader black freedom struggle. In contrast to the
media-driven notion that Black Power was merely
a slogan lacking concrete application, black col-
lege students successfully turned the concept into
a genuine social movement. On some campuses,
© 2011 by Martha Biondi
MARTHA BIONDI is an Associate
Professor of African American
Studies and History at Northwest-
ern University. Her publications
include To Stand and Fight: El
Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar
Nueva York (2003) and “The
Rise of the Reparations Move-
mento,” Radical History Review
(2003). Her newest book, El
Black Revolution on Campus, es
forthcoming from the Univer-
sity of California Press.
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the students emphasized the black col-
lege graduate’s responsibility to serve
black communities. They saw black
studies as a means of generating leaders
para, and sharing intellectual resources
con, neighboring black communities.
Even more, they envisioned black stud-
ies as a means of training black students
to one day return to, and help enact the
self-determination of, their communi-
corbatas. But the black student movement
also aimed to affect campus politics.
On most campuses, the push for curricu-
lar transformation–alongside the ½ghts
for open admissions, af½rmative action,
black cultural centers, and black faculty,
coaches, and advisers–was part of an in-
tentional effort to rede½ne the terms of
integración: away from assimilation into
a Eurocentric institution and toward the
restructuring of that institution and its
mission. Students won many victories
and launched major changes in campus
cultura, opportunity structures, and in-
tellectual production, notwithstanding
continued resistance and challenges.
Greg Carr offers a more critical inter-
pretation of this history. African Ameri-
can studies, he notes, was “a concession”
that began as “crisis management.”2
Hoy, it bears remembering that in 1969,
the majority of white academics and ad-
ministrators doubted the scholarly grav-
itas of African American studies and
viewed black studies as a means to ap-
pease student discontent. African Amer-
ican studies began its modern career in
a context of insurgency and turmoil, y
its advocates continually had to ½ght for
resources and support. Carr argues that
the real history of African American stud-
es, as a serious, respected endeavor, lies
in historically black colleges and univer-
ciudades (hbcus) and other black-controlled
spaces, such as Atlanta’s Institute of the
Black World, an activist think tank of the
1970s. En efecto, hbcus employed the schol-
ars who wrote pioneering studies of
black life, a saber, giants such as intel-
lectual leader W.E.B. Du Bois, political
scientist Ralph Bunche, sociologist E.
Franklin Frazier, and philosopher and
educator Alain Locke. This intellectual
tradition is at the heart of the black stud-
ies project. Además, Carter G. Wood-
son’s Association for the Study of Afri-
can American Life and History, founded
en 1915, exempli½es the long history and
autonomy of Africana intellectual life.
Still, this genealogy is contradictory
and complex. A tidal wave of protest
swept through hbcus in the 1960s and
1970s. The outcry was inspired by a
range of student grievances, most no-
tably, criticism of white ½nancial and
administrative control, excessive regula-
tion of student life, excessive discipline,
inferior facilities and faculty, and out-
moded or Eurocentric curricula. “With-
out question, the Black Power-Black
Consciousness movement has been felt
in the South,” wrote political scientist
and activist Charles Hamilton, formerly
a professor at Tuskegee Institute (now
Universidad); its biggest manifestation
was the quest for a “Black University,”3
he said. Hamilton ½rst articulated the
concept of a black university in a 1967
speech on “The Place of the Black Col-
lege in the Human Rights Struggle.”
He called on black colleges to reject the
white middle-class character imposed
on them by white funders and to re-
de½ne their missions to provide great-
er aid and assistance to black communi-
corbatas. Later published in the Negro Digest,
Hamilton’s article spawned a yearly tra-
dition of devoting an entire issue of the
Negro Digest (later the Black World) to the
idea of a black university.
According to Hamilton, the mission of
the black university was to develop a dis-
tinctive black ethos; to prepare students
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to help solve problems in poor black com-
munities; and to offer a new curriculum,
one that was relevant to contemporary
needs but that also required a course in
ancient African civilizations. “I am talk-
ing modernization,” Hamilton asserted.
“I propose a black college that would
deliberately strive to inculcate a sense of
racial pride and anger and concern in its
students.” The ideas in his essay illus-
trate the emerging view that the black
intelligentsia was a relatively untapped
and potentially radical leadership re-
source for the black liberation move-
mento. “We need,” Hamilton declared,
“militant leadership which the church
is not providing, unions are not provid-
ing and liberal groups are not providing.
. . . I propose a black college that would be
a felt, dominant force in the community
in which it exists. A college which would
use its accumulated intellectual knowl-
edge and economic resources to bring
about desired changes in race relations
in the community.” It would dispense
with “irrelevant PhDs,” he wrote, y
“recruit freedom ½ghters and graduate
freedom ½ghters.”4
Given that schools such as Howard
and the Atlanta University Center had
been home to pioneers in black scholar-
barco, what provoked the charge of Euro-
centrism? Darwin T. Tornero, dean of the
graduate school at North Carolina Agri-
cultural and Technical State University,
argued that the academic turn away from
blackness emerged from the optimism
spawned by early legal decisions support-
ing desegregation, the defeat of Fascism,
and postwar affluence. Political repres-
sión, también, most likely was a factor. "El
tendency for black educators to neglect
materials related to Afro-American her-
itage intensi½ed, I believe, durante el
early 1950s,” Turner wrote. The many
“indications of opening doors persuaded
many blacks to discourage any education
which emphasized the existence of Afro-
Americans as a body separate from the
rest of America.” As a result, “studies of
Afro-American history, literature, sociol-
ogia, economics, and politics were stuffed
into the traditional surveys, which were
already so overcrowded that important
materials must be omitted.” He felt that
“integrated surveys” were necessary but
insuf½cient “to provide Afro-Americans
with the necessary understanding of
their culture.”5
En efecto, en 1968, several members
of Howard’s board of trustees “were
shocked that courses in Black history,
jazz and literature were not presently
offered. ‘We had many of these things
in the 1930s’ commented one member.”6
Students there had taken over a build-
ing to press for a department of Afri-
can American studies. They pressured
Howard to identify itself as a black uni-
versity and adopt an explicit mission
of serving local black communities.
Black nationalist thought and action
in this period were also directed toward
transforming black education on white
campuses. Much of the impetus to de-
velop black studies came from exposure
to the freedom schools of the Southern
(and Northern) civil rights movement.
Activists had come to view the entire
nation’s educational system as a contest-
ed and profoundly signi½cant space: a
means of racial domination, on the one
mano, or a path to black empowerment
en el otro. De este modo, as Greg Carr sug-
gests, administrators may have viewed
the introduction of black studies courses
as “crisis management,” but for students,
the turn toward black studies reflected a
genuine development in their approach
to advancing the cause of black liberation.
Strikingly, this huge achievement of
the black power movement immediately
faced a crisis. With the students gone,
who would design and develop this new,
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and quite extensive, national black stud-
ies infrastructure? En 1970, less than 1 por-
cent of those with a Ph.D. in the United
States were black, and most of these schol-
ars were over age ½fty-½ve.7 In a further
dilemma, quite a few traditionally trained
specialists in African American subjects
initially opposed the creation of African
American studies as an autonomous unit,
or were reluctant to risk their careers on an
untested experiment. Many young black
scholars probably questioned whether
black studies would even last and may
have viewed launching a career in the
½eld as too risky. On this reluctance from
black scholars, sociologist St. Clair Drake
observado, “[t]hey want the security and
prestige of being in a traditional depart-
mento. Black Studies might be a fad, y
they’d be left out in the cold.”8 At times,
non-academics ½lled faculty positions;
on occasion, immigrant scholars with
little connection to the students’ politi-
cal vision ½lled positions, generating new
tensions and many local debates over
the ½eld’s responsibility and mission.
A view quickly took root among many
elite academics that creating African
American studies programs was smarter
than creating departments: el primero,
by being formally af½liated with other
departments, stood a better chance of
attracting top scholars. Yet for all the
scorn/neglect/resistance heaped on them,
departments have de½ed the recurring
predictions of their demise. Most stu-
dent-founders preferred departmental
estado, owing to the department’s greater
status and independence or, as the stu-
dents would have put it, its autonomy
and control. The more recent develop-
ment of doctoral programs in African
American studies has relied on depart-
mental structures, even inducing Yale
to convert its program–once held up as
the national exemplar–to a department.
Hoy, African American studies attracts
leading scholars, trains graduate students,
and produces influential research, incluso
though faculty still face occasions when
they must explain or defend its existence.
Martha
Biondi
The black studies movement has been
marked by intense debates over its aca-
demic character. During and after the
years of its emergence, black studies was
criticized, internally and externally, en
two interrelated grounds: that it lacked
curricular coherence and that, by not
having a single methodology, it failed to
meet the de½nition of a discipline. Como un
resultado, many educators in the early black
studies movement pursued a two-pronged
quest for a standardized curriculum, en
la una mano, and an original, authorita-
tive methodology on the other. En el
mismo tiempo, many scholars in the black
studies movement questioned whether
either of these pursuits was desirable or
even attainable. En otras palabras, mientras
some scholars have insisted that African
American studies must devise its own
unique research methodology, otros
contend that as a multidiscipline, o
interdisciplinary discipline, its strength
lies in incorporating multiple, diverse
methodologies. In a similar vein, mientras
some have argued for a standardized
curriculum, others argue that higher
education is better served by dynamism
and innovation. I argue that the disci-
pline’s ultimate acceptance in academe
(to the extent that it has gained accep-
tance) has come from the production of
influential scholarship and research and
the development of new conceptual ap-
proaches that have influenced other dis-
ciplines. Pioneering scholarship and in-
fluential intellectual innovations, bastante
than standardized pedagogy or method-
ology, have been the route to influence
in American intellectual life.
A tension between authority and free-
dom animates these debates. As late as
140 (2) Primavera 2011
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2000, an article in The Chronicle of Higher
Education reinforced the idea that multi-
ple perspectives and methodologies had
retarded the progress of African Amer-
ican studies. The author of an essay on
the state of the ½eld criticized the diverse
character of African American studies
courses at different universities: "El
Ohio State class is chronological with a
literary bent,” she wrote. “Duke’s take:
cultural studies. The Penn course ½lters
everything through a W.E.B. Du Bois
lente, and N.Y.U. combines pan-African-
ism with urban studies.” Of course, este
sampling reflects the range one would
½nd in the departments of history, soci-
ology, or English at these same univer-
ciudades. But the author stresses disarray.
“There’s a reason 30 years after the disci-
pline developed that people still wonder
whether the black-studies curriculum
represents a coherent subject or a smor-
gasbord,” she concludes. In this view,
the discipline’s strengths–“eclectic,
expansive, experimental curricula”–
are also its weaknesses.9
James B. Stewart, a former president
of the National Council of Black Studies,
shares this anxiety about disarray. In his
vista, “We do everything–the diaspora,
sexo, historia, idioma, economics, race.”
Yet he seems oblivious to the fact that
each of these areas has been vital terrain
for research innovation. “We don’t have
a paradigm,” he laments. “That is why
we don’t make progress.” If achieving
this uni½ed paradigm is the measure of
progress, then Stewart, judging forty
years of African American studies, sees
ninguno. Longtime black studies educator
Abdul Alkalimat echoes Stewart’s view
that “standardization means the disci-
pline exists.”10 Arthur Lewin, a profes-
sor of black and Hispanic studies at
Baruch College, agrees that black stud-
ies lacks “a coherently stated rationale,"
a consequence, in his view, of having
“burst full-blown upon the academic
scene a generation ago.” He envisions
a “grand theory” that would unify the
views of black nationalists and “inclu-
sionists” as well as bene½t from the in-
sights of Afrocentrism while moving
beyond its ethnocentrism.11
Scholars and teachers influenced by
Afrocentricity have been among the most
consistent advocates of the need to cre-
ate a distinctive methodology. For Tem-
ple University scholar Mole½ Asante,
Afrocentricity “is the only way you can
approach African American Studies”
because it puts ancient African knowl-
edge systems at the center of analysis.12
For Greg Carr of Howard University, el
challenge is to draw on “deep Africana
pensamiento,” the traditions of “classical and
medieval Africa,” for guidance in enact-
ing positive social change for African
descendants. A key mission of African
American studies, he believes, debería
be to reconnect “narratives of African
identity to the contemporary era.” His
department taps “into the long genealo-
gy of Africana experiences” in order to
assess how to improve the world. Carr
distinguishes this mission from the mis-
sion of African American studies on
other campuses. “We’re not trying to
explain blackness for white people” or
looking at “our contributions to Amer-
ican society.” Rather, the approach at
Howard is “an extension of the long arc
of Africana intellectual work.”13 The
inclination to look for insights in the
precolonial African past, rejecting Euro-
pean modernity and thereby hoping to
escape or resolve the legacies of colonial-
ism and enslavement, is fundamental to
the approach that leading architects of
Afrocentricity have taken. En efecto, para
Ron Karenga, author of an early black
studies textbook and the founder of
Kwanzaa, “the fundamental point of
departure for African American Studies
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or Black Studies is an ongoing dialogue
with African culture. Eso es, continuous-
ly asking it questions and seeking from it
answers to the fundamental questions of
humankind.”14
Whether proponents of Afrocentricity
or a different approach, most scholars in
African American studies reject the effort
to impose a single methodology, seeing
it as unrealistic and stifling. Rhett Jones,
cofounder and longtime chair of the de-
partment of Africana studies at Brown
Universidad, was an early critic of the “one
size ½ts all” approach to the discipline.
“In its early years, Black studies wasted
considerable human, intellectual, y
material resources in battles over ½nding
the master plan for the study of Black
gente,” he argues. Similarmente, he feels
that “much energy was also wasted on
responding to the charge by America’s
Eurocentric, racist disciplines that Black
Studies had no methodology of its own.
Neither did the Eurocentrists. And they
still don’t.” He points out, “Historians
are no more agreed on methodology or
theory than are anthropologists . . . soci-
ologists or philosophers.”15 In contrast
to those who see pluralism in black stud-
ies as a weakness, Jones believes that this
element was crucial to the development
and staying power of the ½eld. Plural-
ism was “a credit to black studies,” he
observes, as “its founders realized there
could be no master plan as to how the dis-
cipline should serve black Americans.”16
Historian Francille Rusan Wilson simi-
larly resists the effort to impose a single
acercarse. “There’s not one way to be
black or to study black people,” she as-
serts. “The discipline is quite alive,” in
her view, “and the differences indicate
that.”17 Political scientist Floyd Hayes
concurs, stating, “One must ask whether
there should be conformity to a model
curriculum and a single theoretical or
ideological orientation in African Amer-
ican Studies.” Moreover, Hayes believes
it is important to cultivate “a more flexi-
ble and innovative atmosphere” so that
“African American Studies can continue
to grow and develop.”18
Scholars have endeavored to move be-
yond the notion that African American
studies was merely “additive knowledge”
by emphasizing that it constitutes a pro-
found critique of the major disciplines
and seeks to transform intellectual life
generally in the Western academy. Para
Eddie Glaude, African American stud-
ies is about “pushing the boundaries of
knowledge production” and influenc-
ing ½elds of study across the university.
African American studies at its best, en
Glaude’s view, is “challenging the ways
we know the world.” Elizabeth Alexan-
der shares this emphasis on humanistic
transformation and regards African
American studies as an essential compo-
nent of “being fully educated.” Tricia
Rose’s approach to the question of the
½eld’s focus is in many respects exem-
plary of dominant trends. She expresses
agreement with Greg Carr that an im-
portant African intellectual tradition
preceded European colonial contact, pero
in her view, scholars must confront the
transformations wrought by processes of
enslavement and colonialism. “We are in
the west, in the so-called New World,"
she contends, and should “examine the
circumstances we are in, examine the
hybridities that have emerged from it.”19
The early black studies movement co-
incided with major anticolonial strug-
gles in Angola, Mozambique, and Guin-
ea-Bissau; struggles against white settler
regimes in southern Africa; and a widen-
ing African solidarity movement among
black American radicals. According to
(pioneering scholar of the African dias-
pora) Calle. Clair Drake, “[t]he country
was deeply mired in the Vietnam War
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but many black youth were much more
interested in how the war against Portu-
gal was going in Mozambique, Angola
and Guinea-Bissau than in the war in
Vietnam.” In his view, it was critical to
understand that the “modern Black Studies
movement emerged within this international
context.”20 Still, a global consciousness
in black studies was not simply a prod-
uct of postwar solidarity struggles. Tiene
shaped black historical writing ever since
its origins in the nineteenth century. Negro
historiography has been both invested in
rewriting the Western distortion of Afri-
can peoples and societies and keenly in-
terested in erecting a powerful counter-
discourse to the statelessness, dispersal,
subjugation, and dehumanization of Afri-
cans in diaspora. W.E.B. Du Bois is most
famously associated with this effort, pero
its practitioners are numerous.21
Although the black studies movement
is thought of as resolutely U.S.-based,
many of its early scholars tried to per-
suade universities and funders to connect
formally the study of continental Africa,
the Caribbean, y los estados unidos.
There was widespread agreement that the
typical American curriculum had “ignored
the African heritage of African Americans,
characterizing them as having begun their
existence in North America as a tabula
rasa–blank slates to be imprinted with
Euro-American Culture.” This was a dif-
½cult battle in part because African stud-
ies had been programmatically estab-
lished after World War II as a result of
Cold War pressures to develop knowl-
edge about an area of the world that the
United States viewed as part of Soviet
strategic designs. These programs, en el
words of scholar Robert L. harris, “had
no real link to Black people in the New
World.” African studies “became wed-
ded to a modernization theory that mea-
sured African societies by Western stan-
dards. African history, culture and poli-
tics were explored more within the con-
text of the colonial powers than with any
attention to African cultural continuities
in the Western hemisphere.” Black Amer-
ican intellectuals had long resisted this
“compartmentalization of knowledge
about Black people.”22
Administrators initially sought to lim-
it the scope of African American studies
to the United States, but early efforts to
include Africa as well as the diaspora in
black studies departments and profes-
sional organizations ultimately bore
fruit. After four decades, it has become
increasingly common to encounter de-
partments of African and African Amer-
ican studies or departments of Africana
estudios, which explicitly take Africa, el
United States, the Caribbean, and Latin
America as their subject. Campuses as
diverse as the University of Illinois, Dart-
mouth College, the University of Min-
nesota, Universidad de Duke, Harvard Uni-
versity, Universidad Estatal de Pensilvania,
the University of Kansas, Stanford Uni-
versity, the University of Texas, and Ari-
zona State University join together Afri-
can and African American studies. De
curso, the limitations of budgets and
faculty size may interfere with fully real-
izing the promise of interdisciplinary,
truly global coverage. But the crucial
point is that the black studies movement
ultimately achieved a degree of success
in undoing the colonialist compartmen-
talization of research and knowledge
that had insisted on severing African
studies from African American studies.
At various junctures in its forty-year
historia, African American studies has
been steeped in a discourse of crisis. En
the 1970s, many of the discipline’s units
were marked by declining course enroll-
mentos, budget cuts, part-time faculty,
and continued questioning of their legit-
imacy and scholarly rigor. The rise of
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black women’s studies in the 1980s pro-
vided an extremely signi½cant counter-
weight to these trends and proved criti-
cal to re-visioning the ½eld. An outpour-
ing of scholarship and literature by and
about black women helped revitalize
African American studies–and raise its
stature. In many respects, this develop-
ment is ironic, given the patriarchal char-
acter of the early black studies movement.
Male scholars dominated leadership of
the ½eld and often resisted research and
pedagogy on gender and sexuality, cast-
ing these topics as beyond the boundaries
of black studies. But as historian Darlene
Clark Hine noted in 1990, after summa-
rizing a body of pioneering black femi-
nist scholarship, “[t]he study of black
women is the current frontier in black
studies.”23 In more recent years, the rise
of black queer studies has further pushed
African American studies to confront
the homophobic and hetero-normative
assumptions that shaped early pedagogy
and scholarship in the ½eld. According
to Tricia Rose, on the discipline’s fortieth
anniversary, “[GRAMO]ender, class and sex-
uality are more and more a part of the
½eld.”24 The study of intraracial divisions
–along various axes–has assumed a
prominent place in African American
estudios.
Yet in this era of escalating income in-
equality, mass incarceration, permanent
unemployment, and global economic
restructuring, many African American
studies programs and/or scholars main-
tain a commitment to using scholarship
and the resources of the academy to ad-
dress the multiple crises facing black com-
munities. Social conditions are dire for
large segments of the African American
población, as the middle class shrinks,
hiv/aids incidence soars, jobs disap-
pear, and the number of families living
in poverty increases. The left-wing, o
progressive, tradition in black studies
has been most visible in curricula that
seek to join and engage traditions of so-
cial resistance and critique. Individuals
such as sociologist and radio host Michael
Eric Dyson and scholar and civil rights
activist Cornel West make such inter-
ventions to a mass media audience, pero
more typical are the less well-known
black studies scholars and teachers who
are activists in their local communities
on issues ranging from immigration to
health care, employment, education, y
housing. Black studies, along with other
interdisciplinary ½elds, has created lead-
ers in producing scholarship and engag-
ing in critical social analysis on issues
ranging from the rise of neoliberalism
to the development of the United States
as a mass prison society with all its atten-
dant social, económico, cultural, and po-
litical implications.25
Returning to Tavis Smiley’s question:
what is the role of African American stud-
ies in the age of Obama? Princeton’s
Eddie Glaude argues that African Ameri-
can studies teaches “the skills to under-
stand race and racism,” which in many
respects is more urgent than ever as we
face a post-racial discourse that refuses
to acknowledge racism and racists. Como
Elizabeth Alexander puts it, the goal is
not to be post-racial, but post-racist. Tri-
cia Rose believes the independent mis-
sion of African American studies remains
essential because “most academic knowl-
edge in the west has not been race neu-
tral.” The disciplines came “into forma-
tion inside ideological moments when
white supremacy was profoundly dom-
inant,” and this formation is relatively
recent.26 But has the mission of African
American studies changed in other ways?
One change, commented on by many
longtime professors in the ½eld, concerns
a shift in the composition of students tak-
ing black studies courses, from almost ex-
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140 (2) Primavera 2011
233
El
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of African
Americano
Estudios
clusively black in the early days to mul-
tiracial in later years. Rhett Jones cites
student diversity as the most striking
difference from 1969: “In the early years
our classes were almost entirely black.
Now we know we will ½nd a rainbow of
Latino, Asian American, white and black
students in our Afro-American Studies
courses.”27 According to Elizabeth Alex-
ander, 30 percent of students at Yale are
of color. “What we do,” in African Amer-
ican studies, she insists, “is for all of our
students.”28 This shift is widely celebrat-
ed as a sign of the broad appeal of Afri-
can American studies and the fact that
a diverse group of students appreciates
its centrality to a well-rounded liberal
arts education. Yet this development
also illustrates the shift away from the
original Black Nationalist intent by some
advocates of black studies–that is, a
halt “the mis-education of the Negro”
and instill black collegians with a strong
racial consciousness. As the black liber-
ation movement waned, the ambitious
visions of the more radical Afro-Amer-
ican studies programs also waned, o
were crushed, depending on the campus.
And as employment prospects soured
in the 1970s, black students pursued an
agenda in higher education more close-
ly tied to acquiring job skills and profes-
sional mobility. According to a business
major at George Washington University
at the time, “Black students are taking
accounting instead of black history as a
matter of survival. They’re asking ‘what
can you do with Black Studies?’”29
In more recent years, black students
have faced a series of obstacles in their
efforts to attend college. Forty years ago,
student activists asserted a right to edu-
cation and not only won open admissions
and af½rmative action but also increased
½nancial aid. Many of these reforms have
been repealed outright or dramatically
weakened. The early black studies move-
ment was a vibrant development in both
urban, working-class public institutions
and elite research universities. This dual
presence survives, but as the incorpora-
tion of African American studies by elite
institutions coincides with the defund-
ing of public institutions and the sharp
rise in economic inequality in the United
Estados, a widening chasm has formed
between these locations, and distanced
them from their shared histories. Estos
developments have led some commu-
nity-based black studies programs or
veterans to question the contemporary
direction of the ½eld. The rise to public
prominence of black studies scholars at
Ivy League institutions likely fuels this
feeling of estrangement. Olive Harvey
College, a working-class public institu-
tion based on the South Side of Chica-
go, has been hosting an annual African
American Studies Conference since 1977.
On its thirteenth anniversary, conferir-
ence convener Armstead Allen expressed
concern that the new wave of black stud-
ies proponents had strayed too far from
the founding mission. “From its incep-
ción, black studies has sought tangible,
not just theoretical, connections to the
everyday concerns of the African-Amer-
ican community,” he said, contending
that the ½eld had moved in less relevant
academic directions.30
The relationship between African
American studies and Latina/o, asiático
Americano, and other ethnic studies is
increasingly broached in this era of rap-
idly changing demographics and new
racial discourses and con½gurations. On
la una mano, African American studies
is respected as a pioneer and looked to
as a model of interdisciplinarity as well
as institutional resourcefulness and
longevity. As Rhett Jones rightly notes,
“Ideas about multiculturalism, plural-
ismo, and diversity are now central ele-
ments in higher education because of
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black studies’ many successes. Cynics
and conservatives predicted that Afri-
cana studies would be a fad, but it has
instead proved to be a strong and endur-
ing part of higher education, shaping
scholarship, teaching, and service.” In
addition, “African American studies
serves as the model for ethnic studies,
women’s studies, Native-American stud-
es, Latino studies and Asian-American
studies.”31 This modeling happened
quickly on many campuses in Califor-
nia, dónde, in the late 1960s, radicalized
Asian American and Mexican American
students demanded curricular inclusion
and recognition, and in New York City,
where Puerto Rican students protested
alongside African Americans in the 1969
uprisings that swept the City University
of New York.
But the push for Latino/a, Asian Amer-
ican, and comparative ethnic studies came
later in other parts of the country. En algunos
instancias, budgetary pressures and the
seeming logic of the white/non-white
divide have induced administrators to
collapse heretofore independent black
studies programs into umbrella ethnic
studies units, introducing new anxieties
into a discipline whose resources and
stature, to the extent that it has them,
have come relatively recently. In any
evento, African American studies will
face many challenges and dilemmas as
it adapts to a new intellectual/political/
demographic landscape. Por ejemplo,
Muslims in the United States have been
targets of many forms of racial pro½ling
in the years since the attacks of Septem-
ber 11, 2001, politicizing a new Muslim
generation that has begun to assert itself
on college campuses. These students are
demanding a voice and place among eth-
nic studies and student-of-color organi-
zaciones. Will African American studies
approach this development as an oppor-
tunity to cultivate solidarity and sharpen
and update its analysis of racism in the
United States? Or will it ignore such
concerns in favor of an exclusive focus
on the culture, struggles, and dilemmas
of African Americans?
Arguably the most exciting develop-
ment for African American studies in the
twenty-½rst century is the expansion of
doctoral programs. The opportunity to
train young scholars can only add to the
growth, rigor, and institutional stature
of the ½eld. But ensuring the success of
this development will necessitate further
investments in order to enable depart-
ments to provide the additional mentor-
ing and teaching graduate education re-
quires. After forty years, it is now clear
that African American studies has been
one of a series of new departures in the
academy that have dramatically altered
the narrow, Western-oriented curricu-
lum and culture of the American uni-
versity. Perhaps a fuller appreciation of
what has been accomplished can inspire
hope in the possibilities that lie ahead.
notas finales
1 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show, Pub-
lic Radio International, original airdate September 18, 2009, http://thetavissmileyshow
.com/100108_index.html.
2 Ibídem.
3 Charles V. hamilton, “They Demand Relevance: Black Students Protest, 1968–1969”
(unpublished manuscript, C. 1971), 70; copy in author’s possession.
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4 Charles Hamilton, “The Place of the Black College in the Human Rights Struggle,"
Negro Digest 16 (11) (Septiembre 1967): 6 –7.
5 Darwin T. Tornero, “The Center for African Afro-American Studies at North Carolina
Agricultural and Technical State University,” Journal of Negro Education 39 (3) (Verano
1970): 221–222.
6 El (Howard) Hilltop, Abril 26, 1968.
7 Nathan Huggins, Afro-American Studies: A Report to the Ford Foundation (Nueva York:
Ford Foundation, 1985), xx.
8 Steven V. Roberts, “Black Studies Aim to Change Things,"El New York Times,
Puede 15, 1969.
9 Alison Schneider, “Black Studies 101: Introductory Courses Reflect a Field Still De½n-
ing Itself,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Puede 19, 2000.
10 Ibídem.
11 Arthur Lewin, “Towards a Grand Theory of Black Studies: An Attempt to Discern the
Dynamics and the Direction of the Discipline,” Western Journal of Black Studies 25 (2)
(Verano 2001): 76.
12 Mary-Christine Philip, “Of Black Studies: Pondering Strategies for the Future,” Black Issues
in Higher Education, December 29, 1994.
13 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show.
14 Maulana Karenga, “Black Studies: A Critical Reassessment,” Race and Reason 4 (1997–
1998): 41.
15 Rhett Jones, “Black Studies Failures and ‘First Negroes,’” Black Issues in Higher Education,
Octubre 20, 1994.
16 Rhett Jones, “The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies,” Journal of Blacks
in Higher Education 6 (Winter 1994–1995): 92.
17 Schneider, “Black Studies 101.”
18 Floyd V. Hayes, “Preface to Instructors,” in Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American
Estudios, ed. Floyd V. Hayes (San Diego, California: Collegiate Press, 2000), xxxvi.
19 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show.
20 Calle. Clair Drake, “Black Studies and Global Perspectives: An Essay,” Journal of Negro Edu-
catión 53 (3) (Verano 1984): 231.
21 A global focus had long characterized black history writing. See Robin Kelley, “‘But a
Local Phase of a World Problem’: Black History’s Global Vision, 1883–1950” The Journal
of American History 86 (3) (1999).
22 Robert L. harris, “The Intellectual and Institutional Development of Africana Studies,"
in Black Studies in the United States: Three Essays, ed. Robert Hine, Robert L. harris, Jr., y
Nellie McKay (Nueva York: Ford Foundation, 1990; repr., Inclusive Scholarship, 2009), 95–94.
23 Darlene Clark Hine, “Black Studies: Una descripción general,” in Black Studies in the United States,
ed. Hine, harris, and McKay, 23–24.
24 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show.
25 Ver, Por ejemplo, Michelle Alexander, The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of
Colorblindness (Nueva York: New Press, 2010); and David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of
Carrera: Reflections on Racial Neoliberalism (Nueva York: Wiley Blackwell, 2008).
26 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia.” The Tavis Smiley Show.
27 jones, “The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies," 92.
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28 “40th Anniversary of African American Studies in Academia,” The Tavis Smiley Show.
29 Art Harris, “Black Studies Enrollment Shows Dramatic Decline,” The Washington Post,
Martha
Biondi
Noviembre 11, 1979.
30 Salim Muwakkil, “After 20 Años, New Respect for Black Studies,” In These Times,
May 16–22, 1990.
31 jones, “The Lasting Contributions of African American Studies," 92.
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