Pag* IS Section II Portland Observar Thursday. June 21. 1M0
asic issues in Black Education
By Manning Marble
One o f the decisive battleground between Black
people and the American government has been in the
Held o f education.
A t the beginning o f the modern C iv il Rights
Movement, activists in Little Rock, Arkansas and other
Southern towns challenged the legitimacy o f segregation
and white supremacy by attacking the existence o f Jim
Crow public schools. For many Blacks, desegregated
education became the vehicle through which some o f
their broader political demands against racism could be
achieved. By the late 1966s, however, the dimensions o f
the Black critique o f American education had shifted
sig n ific a n tly . Astute observers w ith in the Black
movement began to recognize the lim itations o f the
demand for desegregation within public schools, and
the very bankrupt and backward condition o f the entire
educational establishment which whites had created for
themselves.
In Education and Black Struggle, editied by the In­
stitute o f the Black World, Grace Boggs observed that
"the individualist, opportunist orientation o f American
education has been ruinous to the American community
and most obviously, o f course, to the Black com­
m unity.” Children are "isloated” from one another;
the "natural leadership between theory and practice” is
reversed " in order to keep kids o ff the labor market.
The natural way to learn is to be interested first and then
to develop the s k ill to pursue your in te re s t.”
Dissatisfaction with the educational status quo, com­
bined with a desire to advance the submerged traditions
o f Black ethnicity, culture and history within a struc­
tural form, led to a revolution in Black thinking and
practice in the arena o f education.
By the mid-1970s, the grounds fo r educational
struggle had shifted still further away from the clear-cut
demands for "integration within white educational in­
stitu tio n s.” Generally, the m ajor issues involving
education which confronted Blacks during the period
were the following:
1) Desegregation. Broad elements o f the political New
Right had taken the question o f "School busing for
racial balance" and turned it into a platform for white
supremacy. Should Blacks continue to support in prin­
ciple the desegregation o f p ublic educational in ­
stitutions, especially through the use o f "b u sin g ? ”
Were all-Black public schools, as the N .A.A.C .P main­
tained, "in fe rio r? ”
2) Traditional Black colleges and universities. The
desegregation o f American civil society and the limited
reforms granted by the Johnson Adminstration had ac­
celerated Black enrollments at tra d itio n a lly white
universities and colleges. What should happen to
traditional Black colleges? Should they be merged with
"white-sister institutions," or gradually "integrated"
by white students, faculty and administrators?
3| Black Studies. After the bcom period of the late
1960s, Black Studies Departments experienced drastic
cutbacks and attacks from white universities. What was
the philosophical basis tor Black Studies in the era o f
expanding desegregation? What was the relationship, if
any, between the general white .eaction in culture and
politics during the 1970s and the decline o f Black
Studies during the period?
4) The issue o f community controlled public schools
and other educational institutions within Black neigh­
borhoods. The principle o f com m unity co ntrol o f
schools must be explored as an important process for
educational improvement and accountability. M ajor
cities like New York, which has had community school
districts for the past decade, have never really had
community control per se. Local school boards have
few official powers, and the state legislature carefully
circum scribed the a u th o rity o f local school ad­
ministrators Real community control, where the final
educational authority actually resides within the Black
community, would mean the beginning of a healthier,
more productive and challenging atmosphere in our
public schools.
Com m unity-controlled schools, progressive Black
administrators, plus massive, new federal expenditures
in the form o f outright grants and low interest loans to
such schools, could produce an educational experience
for Black children superior in most respects to a subur­
ban, white school. The choice o f setting linguistic and
ethnic curriculum standards would remain in our own
hands, as would our children’ s futures. W ill a move
toward this kind o f educational alternative occur in the
1980s?
The answers to all o f these questions must begin from
a single observation; the problems and issues relative to
Black education must emerge out o f the more basic
demands for Black political struggle during the coming
years. Certainly, inspite o f their limitations, the Civil
Rights activists in Little Rock almost three decades ago
were asking the right kinds o f questions. They viewed
the issue o f education fo r their children w ithin the
general context o f a segregated racist society.
The demand for integrated education, during the
1950s, constituted a political demand against both Jim
Crow and the American government which could not be
resolved unless basic changes were initiated in the
system. The eventual demise o f Jim Crow education in
the South mean, in effect, a blow against segregation as
a whole. Politics was the key determining factor in
Black educational strategies.
In examing the issues o f busing, the future role o f the
traditional Black universities, the necessity for Black
Studies curricula, and the prospects for community-
controlled schools, politics, not education in a narrow
sense, must be in charge o f our inquiry. Our long range
objective, to create a more democratic and egalitarian
society in both economic relations and in human
relations, must determine the c ritic a l policies and
processes o f Black education.
Manning Marble is currently teaching history at the
Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell Univer­
sity. He is writing a history o f Tuskegee Institute, and is
a leader o f the National Black Political Assembly.
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