3.1: Context and Foundation

 

Africana Studies as a Discipline

To apply the appropriate context for the foundations of Africana Studies, it must be understood that Africana Studies is a transdisciplinary yet specified branch of study and knowledge which employs a systematic and critical study of the ideations and actions of Afrikan^[1] people in the historical and contemporary context, while simultaneously being attentive to the shaping of Afrikan futures. Africana Studies as a discipline, emerged from the political struggles of the 1960s in efforts to combat the misrepresentation, misinformation, and erasure of Black social phenomena within the United States and globally. Hence Africana studies is a discipline embedded, due to its inception, with an enormous capacity for social responsibility and social change. While the discipline of Africana studies is situated within the classroom, its concerns and development stem from an intimate engagement and connection with the broader Afrikan community.

Africana studies as a discipline re-centers the experiences and agency of Afrikan people. Its capacity for social responsibility and justice calls for social formulations that acknowledges, recognizes, and respects all of the various iterations of the human experience. Within the discipline of Africana Studies is a multiplicity of positions, theories, and theoretical frames that accentuate the discipline’s elasticity. The central themes, terms, and definitions that emerge from the intellectual rigor of Africana studies practitioners will be made lucid through a critical engagement of the theorists, intellectuals, scholars, and activists that were the progenitors of these theories, terms, and definitions. Since its inception in 1969, shaped by the activism of the civil rights and Black Power era, Africana studies has stood as the vanguard discipline for moving institutions of higher education forward to a more progressive and inclusive mode of being. Africana studies has operated as the de facto moral compass for institutions of higher learning clearing space for disciplines such as, but not limited to Chicano/Latin American studies, Asian and Pacific Islander studies, and Women’s and Gender Studies. Evolving into the early to mid 1990s with a focus on Afrocentricity and modes of cultural nationalism, Africana studies had its fingers on the pulse of Black culture beyond the confines of the classroom. In this contemporary moment, Africana studies employs a staunch critique of emerging technologies and remains attentive to the oppressive social factors that remain in-tact since the discipline's inception.

The political turmoil and social upheaval that dominated the 1960s had vast implications for the emergence of Africana studies. The assassination of Malcolm X in February 1965 and Martin Luther King Jr. in April of 1968 were still open wounds for the Black community. On November 5th 1968, the immortal prophecy of Malcolm X came true, the “powder keg," exploded. Black students on the campus of San Francisco State College submitted their list of five demands. Fabio Rojas in the text From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline posits, "The first demand was that the college immediately create a Department of Black Studies. Other demands included the appointment of Nathen Hare, a Chicago-trained sociologist, as department chair and the reinstatement of George Murray, a Black Panther and student who was suspended from the college for attacking the editor of the student newspaper."^[2]This passage from Rojas highlights the radical conditions that would give rise to the discipline. Detailing the demands properly situates the desire of the organizers involved; they sought an education that was reflective of their social experience. It becomes instructive to take a brief moment to highlight Nathan Hare, the Chicago trained sociologist organizer who was advocated to be the chair of the department. In 1962 Hare earned his PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago. The University of Chicago is world renowned for its school of sociology and is thought to rival the Frankfort University school of sociology in Germany, which produced the likes of  Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer. This seemingly small detail, has vast implications for the discipline's intellectual rigor. The organizer’s desire to have Hare serve as the department chair speaks to the vast importance students placed on Africana studies educator’s intellectual capacities. For all intents-and-purposes, Hare was an intellectual juggernaut of his time and a committed subversive intellectual. Hare was dismissed from HowardWorld Liberation Front would issue a similar set of demands calling for the institution of an Ethnic Studies Department. The university’s president Robert Smith had a decision to make, capitulate to the demands of students, or deal with the impending strike. According to Rojas, “Although Smith supported black studies and ethnic studies, he would not reinstate Murray or appoint Hare.”^[3] Smith made his decision he would not capitulate to the student demands and the Third World Liberation Front Strike ensued. From November 1968 - March 1969, students destabilized San Francisco State College until the next college president Samuel I Hayakawa reached an agreement to end the strike and Black/Africana Studies was born.

It becomes abundantly clear from the discipline’s inception, it's born out of fugitive^[4] acts of resistance and subversion to epistemological hegemony. The birth of Africana studies is a historic rupture and victory for the decolonization of knowledge within the academy. I liken the discipline’s origin story of students storming the campus to the emancipatory efforts of Nat Turner’s rebellion. Yet, while Turner attempted to emancipate the body of enslaved Afrikans on Virginia plantations, the organizers who laid the foundation for Africana studies sought to emancipate the minds of Afrikan students on the plantations of the California Universities and throughout the United States. How does the discipline’s origin story impact the goals and mission of the discipline? The work of Maulana Karenga’s Introduction into Black Studies (IBS) proves instructive for satisfying these inquiries as he charts the objectives, relevance, mission, and goals of Africana studies. Karenga offers five objectives, seven grounds for relevance, an overarching mission, and five goals for the discipline.

AfricaStudies' Five Objectives

Africana Studies' Five Objectives:

1. Teach the Black experience in all its complexities while being attentive to the history, culture, and contemporary issues faced by the Afrikan diaspora. Karenga posits, “Teach the Black experience in all its variedness and with special attention to history, culture, and current issues. Also, it was advocated that the data and instruction include both the continental African and Diasporan African experience.”^[5]
2. Gather and produce intellectual and political liberatory epistemology. Karenga posits, “Assemble and create a body of knowledge which contributes to intellectual and political emancipation. That is to say, a freeing and development of the mind and then using that knowledge in the interest of Black and human freedom. Political emancipation as a social goal was seen as dependent on intellectual emancipation as an academic goal."^[6]
3. Developing intellectuals who are  dedicated to serving and developing the community juxtaposed to individual careerism. Karenga posits, "Creating intellectuals who were dedicated to community service and development rather than vulgar careerism… Black Studies advocates stressed the need for Black intellectuals who were conscious, capable and committed to Black liberation and a higher level of human life.”^[7]
4. Establishing a close and intimate relationship between the campus and community. Karenga posits,"Cultivation, maintenance, and continuous expansion of a mutually beneficial relationship between the campus and the community… Thus,  the classic alienation between the intellectual and the community would be prevented in an ongoing mutually beneficial exchange, where knowledge is shared and applied in the service of liberation and development of the Black community.”^[8]
5. Establishing the discipline as a central component of the educational project and quality education. Karenga posits, "Establish and reaffirm its position in the academy as a discipline essential to the educational project and to any real conception of quality education. This remains both an academic and political challenge.”^[9]

Africana Studies' Seven Grounds for Relevance 

1. Contribution to humanity’s understanding itself. Karenga posits, “African people are the fathers and mothers of both humanity and human civilization. It is in studying African people that we get an idea of the earliest human beginnings to develop language, art, religion, family and other social forms.”^[10]
2. Contribution to U.S. society’s understanding of itself. Karenga posits, “It is not an exaggeration to say that Black and other Ethnic Studies offer some of the most trenchant criticism and definitive mirror of American society. If it is true that one does not evaluate a society by its pronouncements but by its social practice, then, the study of the Black experience in the U.S. would obviously give an inclusive look at American life, from a race, class and gender perspective.”^[11]
3. Contribution to the university’s realization of its claim and challenge to teach the whole truth. Karenga posits,”No university can claim universality, comprehensiveness, objectivity or effectiveness in creating a context for the development of a socially competent and aware student, if it diminishes, denies or deforms the role of African peoples in history and society.”^[12]
4. Contribution to the rescue and reconstruction of Black history and humanity. Karenga posits, “As an affirmative, critical, and corrective academic and social project, Black Studies affirms the truth of Black history and humanity and critiques and corrects the racist myths assembled to deny and deform them.”^[13]
5. Contribution to a new social science. Karenga posits, “Black studies is interdisciplinary, becoming a paradigm for multidimensional approach to social science and an inclusive humanities, not simply focusing on Blacks, but critically including other Third World peoples.”^[14]
6. Contribution to the development of a socially conscious Black intelligentsia and professional stratum. Karenga posits, “Black Studies seeks to cultivate a body of intellectuals who are committed to using their knowledge in the service of the community, society and ultimately humankind. ”^[15]
7. Contribution to the critique, resistance and reversal of the progressive Europeanization of human consciousness and culture. Karenga posits, “The Europeanization of human consciousness and culture is used here to mean the systematic invasion and effective transformation of the cultural consciousness and practice of the various people of the world by Europeans.”^[16]

 

Africana Studies' Overarching Mission

• Cultural Grounding; “For Black Studies as an intellectual and social practice is, of necessity, rooted in African culture — Continental and Diasporan. Indeed, by definition it is the critical and systematic study of Black culture, i.e., the thought and practice of African peoples in their current and historical unfolding.”^[17]
• Academic Excellence; “Black Studies requires from its professors achievements beyond routine competence, skillful renderings of established-order ideas or complaint acceptance of inherited frameworks, contentions, and conclusions from other disciplines. As affirmed in its original mission and self—conception, Black Studies requires from its professors and scholars an excellence in scholarship and teaching that represents a superior level of creative reflection, rigorous research, and cutting-edge intellectual production.”^[18]
• Social Responsibility; “The emphasis in the Black Studies mission on social responsibility is derived from an African conception of knowledge and education as not only an indispensable path to understanding the world, but also as a vital instrument in changing it; not only an invaluable resource for enhancing the life of the mind, but also an equally essential resource for improving and expanding the life of the people.”^[19]   

Africana Studies' Five Goals

1. The critical and persistent search for truth and meaning in human history and social reality from an African vantage point.
2. A depthful intellectual grasp and appreciation of the ancient, rich, varied and instructive character of the African initiative and experience in the world and of the essential relevance of African culture as a unique and equally valid and valuable way of being human in the world.
3. A rigorous intellectual challenge and alternative to the established-order ways of viewing social and human realty.
4. A moral critique and social policy corrective for social constraints on human freedom and development, especially those rooted in race, class, and gender considerations.
5. Cultivation of commitment and contribution to the historical project of creating a truly multicultural, democratic and just society and good world based on mutual respect of the rights and needs of persons and peoples, mutual cooperation for mutual benefit and shared responsibility for building the good world all humans want and deserve to live in.^[20

The aforementioned objectives, grounds for relevance, overarching mission, and five goals of the discipline provided through Karenga’s Introduction into Black Studies, properly situate the context and foundation of the discipline, while simultaneously detailing the transformative aims of the discipline. Now that Africana Studies foundation, context and historical unfolding have been addressed, the process of  understanding how the discipline of Africana Studies produces fugitive knowledge begins , uncovering the discipline’s liberatory pedagogy. Yet, what deeper understanding of the discipline’s fugitive knowledge and liberatory pedagogy could be gained by engaging the key theorists, movements, and principals of the discipline? The next section is designed to take up this inquiry in attempts to unpack the fugitive knowledge and liberatory pedagogy of Africana Studies. 

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Endnotes

^[1] For this work with the exception of quoting other authors, Afrika and Afrikan will be spelled exclusively with a K, building on and with Haki R. Madhubuti’s contention, “Africans themselves use the letter "K" in these words; Europeans "polluted" the spelling by switching the "K" to a "C" during the attempted colonization of the African continent… Reverting to the "K" spelling empowered people of African descent and created the foundation for a common identity between them.”

^[2]  Rojas, Fabio. From Black Power to Black Studies: How a Radical Social Movement Became an Academic Discipline. Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2007. 1  

^[3]  Ibid. 1

^[4] Fugitivity, is a concept that derives from plantation society. When an enslaved person, who is considered the property of the enslaver who owns the plantation, seeks to liberate oneself from the plantation, the act of “stealing” oneself is a fugitive act. To escape the plantation is to engage in a form of fugitivity the employs a constant state of flight from capture and being returned to the plantation.

^[5] Karenga, Maulana. IBS: Introduction into Black Studies. Los Angeles: University of Sankore Press, 2010. 18

^[6] Ibid. 18

^[7] Ibid. 18

^[8] Ibid. 18

^[9] Ibid. 19

^[10] Ibid. 20

^[11] Ibid. 20

^[12] Ibid. 20

^[13] Ibid. 21

^[14] Ibid. 21

^[15] Ibid. 21

^[16] Ibid. 22

^[17] Ibid. 25

^[18] Ibid. 26

^[19] Ibid. 26

^[20] Ibid. 27