"Great stress
is being laid — and not without reason — upon the facilities of
education
now within reach of our people in the United States — the book
learning
which many of them are now receiving. This is certainly a matter for
congratulation.
But we must not lose sight of the important fact to be gathered from
the
very etymology of the word education, viz; that book learning is not
the
most essential part of our educational needs as a people. You do not
educate
a man when you merely fill his mind; but you do educate him when you
lead
out his powers. You do not educate a man when you merely tell him what
he knew not; but you do educate him when you make him feel what he
ought
to feel; the one is mental, the other affectional. The one teaches him
to lean upon others, the other teaches him to "retire upon himself."
All this latter lesson is what the Negroes of America need more than
all
the literature of the schools.
"And this view of their
education becomes
more important when we look upon the work which a large portion
of
them are destined to do in their Fatherland. There they will not
be able to succeed as mere imitators of the European. And yet
this
is what, for the most part, they are becoming, by the very condition of
their training, in America. The effect of the instruction received by
our
people directly from their white teachers, and indirectly from their
surroundings,
is to induce an accretive growth, and not a development from within —
to
impress upon them a mould and not to give them inward vigor. But in the
work to be done in Africa they will need a great deal more than the
thin
veneering.which answers all their practical needs, while they remain in
America, and are not forced by the exigencies of their circumstances to
"retire upon themselves."
"The proper Negro is in
Africa, and only
in co-operation with him will the American Negro succeed in
constructing
the much-needed African nationality. I have travelled among Negroes in
all parts of the world. I have seen them under Anglo-Saxon, Celtic,
Scandinavian
and Semitic rule. I have lived in the United States, in the West
Indies,
in Venezuela; I have travelled in Syria, Egypt, and in the interior of
Africa, and I testify that the manhood of the race is in the heart of
Africa
the basis upon which the African national superstructure is to be
erected
of materials imported no doubt in large proportions from the Western
Hemisphere.
During my travels in the interior of Africa, I have met men, both Pagan
and Mohammedan, to whom as well from their physical as their mental
characteristics,
one voluntarily and instinctively feels like doing reverence. . . .
"The best of the African
peoples have seldom
been seen in foreign lands As a rule, it was from the servile class the
inferior tribes that America was furnished with slaves. The higher
classes
very rare]y fell into the hands of the slave-traders. Among the blacks
in America, now, I can always tell the men whose ancestors in Africa
were
of the servile class. . . .
"Even "in the unhealthy
swamps of the West
Coast," I have seen men who would grace any court in Europe, and women
whose form any artist would covet. Notwithstanding the so-called
savagery
of Ashantee, and the alleged atrocities of Dahomey, there is a
future
for this race, which will be peculiar in the history of humanity, if
not
in what the world calls glory, yet in usefulness to mankind; and in
looking
forward to that future, I feel proud that I am a member of this
race."
— Edward Wilmot Blyden, 1878
"Take for
instance
the current problem of the education of our children. By the law of the
land today, they should be admitted to the [white] public schools. If
and
when they are admitted to these schools, . . . Negro teachers will
become
rarer and in many cases will disappear. Negro children will be . . .
taught
under unpleasant, if not discouraging, circumstances. Even more largely
than today they will fall out of school, cease to enter high school,
and
fewer and fewer will go to college. Theoretically Negro universities
will
disappear. Negro history will be taught less or not at all and . . .
Negroes
will remember their white or Indian ancestors and quite forget their
Negro
forbearers. . . .
"Long
before the
year 2000, there will be no school segregation on the basis of race.
The
deficiency in knowledge of Negro history and culture, however, will
remain
and this danger must be met or else American Negroes will disappear.
Their
history and culture will be lost. Their connection with the rising
African
world will be impossible."
— W.E.B. DuBois, 1960
"In
the same way
that we break beyond false boundaries of Western colonialism,
attempting
to recreate our essential Pan-African unity, expressing our solidarity
with the larger pro-human struggles, so, too, our truth demands that we
reject the artificial barriers of the academic disciplines to seek the
human unity which underlies the experience of our people . . . we deny
a priori validity of methodological disciplines, concepts, and "fields"
which have been established without our participation, and which have
often
worked against the best intellectual and political interests of the
African
peoples. . . . Here again, examples abound of black scholars who have
acted
out this element of the struggle in their own lives, who have moved
continuously
beyond, and sometimes against, the disciplines assigned to them by the
university. Instead, they have allowed the experience of our people to
become the organizing reality. Disciplines, fields, and concepts have
been
either ignored and rejected, or transformed, restructured, and taken to
higher levels of usefulness in their lives and work."
— Vincent Harding, 1974
