AFRICAN CENTERED EDUCATION AS A RESPONSE TO CULTURAL HEGEM ONY: TOW ARD A TEM PLATE FOR AFRICAN AM ERICAN AND

HUM AN LIBERATION Bartley McSwine, Chicago State University Culture and Identity Culture is one of the most fascinating things that humans produce. Both material and non-material, it engulfs, defines and imprints everything that we do. At the same time, culture, like the water that surrounds all sea creatures, or the air that surrounds all humans, is not well understood and generally taken for granted by most people on earth. One prominent anthropologist, Edward Hall, has said that: Culture is mans medium; there is not one aspect of human life that is not touched and altered by [it]. This means personality, how people express themselves (including shows of emotion), the way they think, how they move, how problems are solved, how their cities are planned and laid out, how transportation systems function and are organized, as well as how economic and governmental systems are put together and function (Hall, p. 14). Discussing the generalized concept of an American culture, Hall says that white Americans who have historically defined what American culture is, are like people around the world, imprisoned by their own culture, imprisoned by their own time and space systems. This sense of imprisonment is nothing new. W hat is new or significant is that W estern culture has had such a great impact on the world that it has come to in many ways define world culture. The concept of time and space as being linked in a system, points to the fact that one cannot speak of time without implicating space, and one cannot speak of space without implicating time. In other words, for one to move in time, one has to move in space. And, for one to move in space, one has to move in time. To exist, is to exist at some time and in some space. Extracting and examining one aspect of this system, namely time, for the purposes of analysis, Hall says American time is . . . mono-chronic(p. 22); that is, Americans, when they are serious, usually prefer to do one thing at a time, and this requires some kind of scheduling, either implicit or explicit. He says that not all Americans conform to mono-chronic norms but that social pressures keep most Americans operating within this framework. Contrasting mono-chronic time with what he calls poly-chronic time (M -time vs. P-time), he says that while mono-chronic time emphasizes schedules, segmentation, and promptness, poly-chronic time is characterized by several things happening at once. It stresses involvement of people (not individualism or individual accomplishment) and completion of transactions rather than adherence to preset schedules. By scheduling W estern world compartmentalizes which makes it possible to concentrate on one thing at a time, but this also denies context. Since scheduling by its very nature selects what will and will not be perceived and attended to and permits only a limited number of events within a given period, what gets scheduled in or out constitutes a system of priorities for both people and functions (Hall, p. 15). This setting of priorities then comes to reflect the persons value system or the cultures value system. The denial of context then begins to show up as normalized behavior where motives and values are implicit and invisible to most outside viewers. Here mono-chronic time is equated with clock time and poly-chronic time is equated with event time. Culture also fall along a continuum, says Hall, from Low Context to High Context. Most W estern cultures which use mono-chronic time are low context, i.e. cultures who view time in a linear manner and communicate internally by placing more emphasis on the literal meanings of words; while on the other hand High Context cultures which use time in a non-linear manner, place more emphasis on symbolic meaning and non-verbal communication through the use, for example, of art and music. This is particularly true of African and Native American culture. In these cultures everything speaks. In W estern cultures, for the most part, only humans speak. Halls discussion of high and low context cultures and how time and space function as a part of culture is what I have termed the phenomenology of culture. It is the interlocking, flexible and ever malleable parts of what makes up an entire complex of concepts and events consisting of everything that humans produce. It is an extension of those who created it, and they in a sense, are also an extension of it. Understanding how culture works and the significance of culture in human life are key factors, then, in understanding the consequences and legacy of slavery. Cultural Genocide and the Consequences of Slavery For African people and European people slavery represented a clash of cultures. And, insofar as Africans were concerned, cultures were violated and cultural codes were ignored or destroyed. People were placed in environments that were designed to denigrate or separate them from their culture. This has been called cultural genocide. Thus in defining the term genocide in its 1948 resolution, the United Nations said in Article II of its definition that genocide is: 272

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any act committed with the idea of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. This includes: killing members of a group; causing serious mental or bodily harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on [the] group conditions of life calculated to bring about its destruction in whole or in part; and forcefully transferring children of the group to another group (UN Resolution 260III, 1948). One of the consequences of slavery in America was the creation of a fragmented people. People who have consciously or unconsciously been trying to put themselves back together again. People were lumped together under one nomenclature, blacks, and ethnic identities were erased. Thus, people who were Ibo, Yoruba, Twi, Hausa, Fulani, or W olof, became blacks or the coloreds. Languages were erased as well as customs such as religious ceremonies, educational traditions, matrimonial traditions, ethical/moral traditions and burial rituals. They were separated from ancestral land considered sacred. They were taken away from sacred ancestral burial places. Individual names were erased as exemplified by a scene in the docudrama Roots which aired in the late 1970s. Kunta Kinte, a central character in the drama gets renamed Tobi by his master a key factor in understanding what happened to all African Americans. Using Harvard University professor Orlando Patterson (1982) concepts of intrusive versus extrusive forms of social death in slavery, one can easily see that what happened to enslaved Africans in America was a form of intrusive social death. Patterson says that this occurred when: the slave was ritually incorporated as the permanent enemy on the inside the domestic enemy, . . . he was the product of a hostile , alien culture . . . his greatest misfortune lay in the fact that he had no ancestral home, hence no rights . . . he was a stranger in a strange land (Patterson p. 39). This did not, however, destroy or eliminate the desire for education. Africans knew they were considered unequal and they came to consider themselves unequal because they did not know how to read and write. Over time this created within them a growing desire for literacy and education. The Quest for Education During Slavery The eminent historian Carter G. W oodson in his book The Education of the Negro Prior to 1861, addresses the issues that cultural hegemony raised insofar as the education of blacks was concerned. The central question facing plantation owners was whether and how the slave should be trained. Africans were brought to America to work, and it was only as manual laborers that they had value as property. Before and during the middle passage, no serious thought was given to their education. They came to constitute (along with poor whites) the laboring class. Eventually, however, the issue arose as to how they could be made to be even more valuable to their owners. This implicated some sort of training to meet the needs and demands of their new environment. Few disagreed with that. Plantation owners recognized early that those who understood the English language would be more valuable to their owners than those who did not. On the other hand there was the question of exactly how far this training or education should go. There were those whites who believed that slaves could not be educated without creating in them a longing for freedom. There were also those who felt that the more ignorant and brutish the enslaved were, the more pliant and obedient they would be. And there were those who argued that the slaves should be educated or trained as far as their talents would allow. W oodson says that it was the second group the class of slaveholders and plantation owners who argued for maintaining ignorance among the slaves that finally won the majority of southerners to their way of thinking. Therefore laws were passed in most southern states that prohibited enslaved Africans from learning to read and write. Mitchell, quoting W hitaker (1990) says, that Georgia passed laws prohibiting black education in 1830, and, in 1835, North Carolina outlawed all public instruction for Africans; and, in 1847, Missouri passed laws making it illegal to teach blacks (Mitchell, 2008). This, however, also did not quench the desire for learning among Africans, and Africans both on their own, as well as with the assistance of some whites developed surreptitious means of acquiring knowledge. W oodson refers to this as stolen knowledge. Knowledge was considered stolen because it was against the law to have it. And being against the law the penalties for violating these laws were often harsh . Describing how knowledge was acquired, W oodson says: Bishop Turner . . . purchased a spelling book and secured the services of an old white lady and a white boy, who in violation of the State law taught him to spell as far as two syllables . . . By hiding books in a hayloft and getting white children to teach him, James W . Sumler of Norfolk, Virginia obtained an elementary education . . . [and] a colored woman by the name of Deveaux . . . for thirty years conducted a [secret] Negro school [against the law] in the city of Savannah (pp. 212217). This pattern of stealing knowledge continued throughout the period of slavery. W oodson reports that many illegal colored schools were set up in violation of State laws. He says that more schools existed for slaves than

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whites knew about because the schools were placed in secret locations. The quest for education intensified even more after the end of slavery with more and more blacks finding ways to be educated. No amount of coercing could seem to prohibit this from happening. The Quest for Education After Slavery James Anderson (1988) in his book The Education of Blacks in the South, 1860 1935 details what happened with black education in the years immediately after slavery. W hile many types of schools were set up, it was the Sabbath school that reached the widest audience. Anderson says that frequently Sabbath schools were set up before free or public schools. These were church-sponsored schools that were operated mainly in the evenings and on weekends and provided basic literacy instruction. Quoting from John W . Alvords first report to the Freedmens Bureau submitted in January 1866, Anderson presents a vivid picture of the accomplishments of these Sabbath schools. Alvord, who was the national superintendent of schools for the Freedmans Bureau, wrote in 1866 that: Sabbath schools among freedmen have opened throughout the entire South; all of them giving elementary instruction, and reaching thousands who cannot attend the week-day teaching . . . . Indeed one of the most thrilling spectacles which he who visits the southern country now witnesses in cities, and often upon the plantations, is the large schools gathered upon the Sabbath day, sometimes of many hundreds, dressed in clean Sunday garments . . . intent upon elementary and Christian instruction (Anderson, p. 13). Anderson says that these schools were set up and supported largely through African Americans own self-help efforts. And in 1866 when Freedmens Bureau officials closed all black schools allegedly to reduce the financial costs to the Bureau, the colored population at once expressed a willingness to be assessed the entire expense. Black leaders petitioned Yankee military officers to levy an added tax upon their community to replenish the bureaus school fund (Anderson, p. 9). The Freedmens Bureau was closed in July of 1868 after just three years of operation. Established in March of 1865 to provide relief to black and white southerners who had been displaced by the civil war, . . . the bill was primarily aimed at assisting the freed slaves in their transition from enslavement to liberty wrote Robert C. Kennedy (2001). The Bureau has generally been considered a failure due to non-governmental support. Twenty eight years later (in 1896) after the closing of the Freedmens Bureau, the U.S. Supreme Court delivered a landmark decision in the Plessy v Ferguson case. Plessy, as the case has come to be known, upheld a Louisiana law requiring separate but equal accommodations for blacks and whites on interstate railroads. It was the decision that laid down the legal basis for segregation throughout the country in public facilities. Separate schools and facilities were created for blacks and whites but these schools and facilities were never equal. Fifty-eight years after Plessy v Ferguson, in 1954, the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v Board essentially overturned the Plessy decision and said the separate facilities and schools were inherently unequal and that public schools must proceed to integrate with all deliberate speed. (Supreme Court of the United States , 1954). Now, more than fifty years later we can assess the success or failure of the Brown decision to date. The Legacy and Failure of Brown Gary Orfields and Chungmei Lees (2004) report entitled Brown at 50: Kings Dream or Plessys Nightmare? and published by The Civil Rights Project at Harvard University details what has happened in the nations schools since the 1954 Brown decision. This report examines a decade of re-segregation from the time of the Supreme Courts 1991 Dowell decision, which authorized a return to neighborhood schools, even if that would create segregation. In its executive summary the authors list their major findings. Among their findings were that: In many districts where court-ordered desegregation was ended in the past decade, there has been a major increase in segregation . . . . Among the four districts included in the original Brown decision, the trajectory of educational desegregation and re-segregation varies widely, and . . . three of the four cases show considerable long-term success in realizing desegregation . . . . Rural and small town districts are, on average, the nations most integrated for both African Americans and Latinos. Central cities of large metropolitan areas are the epicenter of segregation; segregation is also severe in smaller central cities and in the suburban rings of large metros . . . . There has been a substantial slippage toward segregation in most of the states that were highly desegregated in 1991 . . . .

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American public schools are now (2004) only 60 percent white nationwide . . . most white students have little contact with minority students. Asians, in contrast, are the most integrated and by far the most likely to attend multiracial schools with a significant presence of three or more racial groups . . . . The vast majority of intensely segregated minority schools face conditions of poverty, which are powerfully related to unequal educational opportunity. Students in segregated minority schools face conditions that students in segregated white schools seldom experience. Latinos confront very serious levels of segregation by race and poverty, and non-English speaking Latinos tend to be segregated in schools with each other. The data show no substantial gains in segregated education for Latinos even during the civil rights era . . . . There has been a massive demographic transformation of the W est, which has become the nations first predominantly minority region in terms of total public school enrollment. This has produced a sharp increase in Latino segregation. These conclusions do not give the picture that Brown has been successfully implemented. In fact one could make the case that in many ways the nation is worse off today both because of the closing of many of the infrastructure businesses that served the black community and because of the closing of all black schools in the name of integration. I would argue that Brown has failed and should be reexamined in the light of the knowledge of culture and resilience of racism that we witness today. I would argue that it has failed not just because it has failed to create quality education for black students across the country, but because the very premise of Brown was wrongheaded. Brown defined quality education for blacks in terms of integration or removing barriers of attendance and not in terms of using the cultural background of African American students as an instrument for achieving academic excellence (Ladson-Billings, 1992, Hilliard, 2004). This was problematic for black children given the impact of cultural hegemony on African American students and the fact that U.S. culture had historically been defined through the use of values from various European ethnic groups. In the language of the Brown v Board decision the Supreme Court said: Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of separating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system (Supreme Court of the United States, ,1954). Seeing racial segregation primarily as a denial of the rights of minority children under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to attend school wherever they wanted to, the court completely lost sight of how the very culture of the curriculum and the pedagogical techniques used within the public schools served to reinforce and reproduce hierarchal relationships based on race and racial hegemony. Additionally, it lost sight of or never considered the need for the restoration of a sense cultural identity for black students and other minority students based on their own traditional cultural values. Racism, Cultural Hegemony, and African Centered Education Semms (1995) defines cultural hegemony as the systemic negation of one culture by another. He goes on to say: By this process I mean that the internal dynamics of one culture evolves in such a way that it calls into dissolution the independence, coherence, and viability of another culture to which it has a socio-historical connection. In a sense, the one culture bases its existence and well-being on the ability to absorb, redirect, or redefine institution building and symbol formation in the other (p. 1). From Semmes perspective, the impetus behind cultural hegemony is the historical phenomenon of European expansion and contact, which resulted in the exploitation of Africa for its human, mineral, and agricultural wealth. Racism then emerged from a cultural complex of psychological factors which included alienation, color prejudice and xenophobia and eventually became operationalized as white supremacist ideology. W hite supremacy ideology, sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit, has been the primary sabotaging force that has prevented the achievement of quality education for blacks, nonwhites and the poor in American society exhibiting a web-like nexus that corrodes progress. For African Americans specifically, the struggle for quality education has never addressed the impact of cultural hegemony on the black psyche (W oodson, 1991; W ilson, 1992; Hilliard, 1997). Many books now have been written on this topic. They all address African American psychology and the issue of the legacy of racism, education

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and cultural hegemony in the African American community ( see for example, Hale-Benson, 1986; Hale, 2001; Jones, 2004; Lee, 2007). Most African American mental health professionals feel that this is still a central issue in the black community exemplified by the good hair/bad hair syndrome, the skin color complex, the high rates of homicide and the high divorce rates that currently plague the black community. One of the earliest books to address this issue was W .E.B. DuBois (1903) book The Souls of Black Folk. Another more contemporary book that addresses this issue is Frantz Fanons (1967) book Black Skin/White Mask. Mental Health professionals first started to address this issue in more recent times in the 1970s with the publication of Reginald Jones (1972) book Black Psychology. Charles White followed in 1984 with his book The Psychology of Blacks. In 1998 Kobi Kambon published African/Black Psychology in the American Context: An African Centered Approach and W ade Nobles in (2006) published Seeking the Sakhu a book he refers to as foundational writing for an African psychology. Robert Guthrie (1991) in an article entitled The Psychology of African Americans: An Historical Perspective said that the first conference on black psychology was convened in July of 1938 on the campus of Tuskegee Institute by Herman Canady and Francis Cecil Sumner Sumner is generally considered to be the father of black psychology. Among many other concerns, Guthrie says that the psychologists attending this 1938 conference were concerned with the totality of the gestalt of the black experience (p. 41). This included the impact and legacy of slavery on the black community. Over the past forty years, African centered education has gained increasing popularity in the black community. New Concepts school in Chicago has been in operation now for more than thirty-five years. African centered education focuses on developing cultural literacy as well as academic literacy among African American students. Gloria Ladsen-Billings, at the University of W isconsin at Madison, has said that African Americans first need to be literate in their own culture. Of course there is a need to be literate in the larger American culture but, according to Ladsen-Billlings and others, literacy in African American culture is a prerequisite for creating a groundedness in ones own identity based on ones own traditions. Paulo Freire (1972) in his groundbreaking book Pedagogy of the Oppressed describes explicitly what happens to oppressed people psychologically. He says that the oppressed internalize the value system of their oppressors and in turn become their own oppressors. Safisha Madhubuti (1994) in an article entitled African Centered Pedagogy argues that African American people need an African-centered pedagogy because racism and world-wide Eurocentric hegemonic attitudes and practices are still the order of the day. The existing pedagogy in public education remains European-centered. (p. 15) She quotes Lomotey (1990) that Despite the upward mobility of many middle and upper-middle class African Americans, the majority of African-Americans remain in poverty and do not achieve educational parity in American schools (p. 15). Finally, she argues that The status of the majority of African-Americans relative to whites has not changed significantly throughout the history of the United States (p. 15). An effective African-Centered pedagogy she says would: legitimize African stores of knowledge; positively exploit and scaffold productive community and cultural practices; extend and build upon the indigenous services to ones family, community, nation, race, and world; promote positive social relationships; impart a worldview that idealizes a positive, self-sufficient future for ones people without denying the selfworth and right to self-determination of others; and, support cultural continuity while promoting critical consciousness. (pp . 1516) W ith the development of multicultural education beginning in the 1970s, Americans started to recognize what Pinar has referred to as the racial aspects embedded in the curriculum of the public schools. Curriculum As a Racial Text Pinar (1993) argues that all curriculum in American schools is a racial text. For him race, text and identity are all interrelated. W e need all three to begin to understand the American national identity, he says. As mentioned earlier, curriculum is grounded in values and in turn reflective of the values of the individuals who created it. Historically, the curriculum of most schools in America have presented African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans and Asian Americans as the other. This has been both implicit and explicit. So, if we just return for a moment to the early 1970s, well return to a period when multicultural education was beginning to become known as an area to take seriously within the academy. And prior to 1968, black studies was no-where to be found within the academy (p. 58). Today, although black studies programs and departments exist in most colleges and universities, these

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institutions do not see it as foundational to what goes on in the rest of the university. Similar situations existed with Native American Studies, Latino American Studies and Asian American Studies. This effectively meant that even though the other existed within society, their legitimacy as sources of knowledge did not exist. Pinar quotes Toni Morrison as saying we are not, in fact, the other(p. 61). W e are the opposite side of the same coin. Pinar says that we are what we know, and that we are also what we dont know. This means that subjugated knowledge has played a major role in controlling the American psyche and to a large degree still controls that psyche today (p. 61). According to Foucault subjugated knowledge is knowledge that is delegitimized, suppressed or erased because it comes from people who have had their identities delegitimized, suppressed or erased (1980). This was exemplified by the exposure of the Great Books canon in the 1990s (a canon which had been in place for over a century) which had no women and/or people of color in it. Today Africa is still largely absent from the American national curriculum. And the portrayal of Africa that most people get from watching television is the picture of an Africa that has been devastated by racism, colonialism and neocolonialism. Few programs go into an in-depth analysis of the impact of colonialism and slavery on the African continent. Few programs go into the existence of high civilizations and institutions in Africa prior to the European slave trade and colonialism. Implied in Pinars work is the idea that when we speak of Africa were not just talking about an arbitrary insignificant part of the earth. W ere talking about the home of humankind. W e talking about the source of indigenous world culture and the source of indigenous world civilizations. W ere talking about our extended family members that are not a part of the discursive curriculum of American Studies. By ignoring Africa were leaving out a central part of who we are as a people. Thus we end up with what Pinar calls a fragmented self a self that contains repressed elements which we fear. He says that such a self lacks access both to itself and to the world (p. 61). Finally, Pinar argues that understanding curriculum as a racial text means understanding America as fundamentally a racialized place, as fundamentally an African American place, and an American identity as inescapably African American as well as European, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian and Asian. African Americans, he argues, are the ego, superego and id of American society. Debates over the canon then are also debates over the constitution of the American self. African centered education is an attempt to liberate African people from oppression and in doing so restoring all of humanity to its sacred Self. REFERENCES Anderson, J. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the South, 18601935. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press. DuBois, W .E.B. (1999). The Souls of Black Folk. New York: W .W . Norton & Co. Fanon, F. (1997). Black Skin/White Mask. New York: Grove Press. Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: The Seabury Press. Hale-Benson, J. (1982). rev. ed. Black Children: Their Roots, Culture, and Learning Styles. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Hale, J. (2001). Learning While Black: Creating Educational Excellence for African American Children, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press. Hall, E. (1976). Beyond Culture. Garden City: Anchor Press/Double Day. Hilliard, A. (1997). SBA: The Reawakening of the African Mind, Gainesville: Makare Publishing Company. Hilliard, A. (2004). No Mystery: Closing the Achievement Gap Between Africans and Excellence, in Young, Gifted and Black: Promoting High Achievement Among African American Students. Boston: Beacon Street Press. Jones, R. (1991). 4 th ed. Black Psychology. Hampton, V.A: Cobb & Henry Publishers Kambon, K. (1998). Afrikan/Black Psychology in the American Context. Tallahassee: Nubian Nation Publishers. King, J. (2005). ed. Black Education: A Transformative Research and Action Agenda for the New Century. New York: Routledge Publishers. Kennedy, R. (2001). The Freedmen Bureau, HarpWeek. Accessed, July 20, 2009 from http://www.nytimes.com/learning/general/onthisday/harp/0725.html. 277

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Ladson-Billings, G. (1992). Liberatory Consequences of Literacy: A Case of Culturally Relevant Instruction for African American Students. Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 61 No. 3. Lee, C. (2007). Culture, Literacy and Learning, New York: Teachers College Press. Lomotey, K. (1990). Going to School: The African-American Experience New York: Suny Series Frontiers in Education. Madhubuti, H. & S. Madhubuti (1994). African Centered Education. Chicago: Third W orld Press. McCarthy, C. & W . Crichlow (1993). Race, Identity and Representation in Education. New York: Routledge Publishers. Mitchell, A.B. (2008). Self-Emancipation and Slavery: An Examination of the African Americans Quest for Literacy and Freedom, 2, p. 5, The Journal of Pan African Studies. Nobles, W . (2006). Seeking the Sakh: Foundational Writings for an African Psychology. Chicago: Third W orld Press. Orfield, G. & C. Lee (2004). Brown at 50: Kings Dream or Plessys Nightmare. The Civil Rights Project. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Patterson, O. (1982). Slavery and Social Death. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Pinar, W .Notes on Understanding Curriculum as a Racial Text in Race identity and representation in education, McCarthy, C. & Crichlow, W . (eds). New York: Routledge Publishers,1993. Semmes, C. (1995). Cultural Hegemony & African American Development. W estport: Praeger Publishers. Supreme Court of the United States, Brown V. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483, 1954. Accessed, July 23, 2009 from http://www.nps.gov/archive/brvb/pages/decision54.htm Supreme Court of the United States, Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). UN Resolution on Genocide 260, (1948). Internet Modern History Sourcebook, Accessed, July 20, 2009 from http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/modsbook44.html W hite, J.L. (1984). the Psychology of Blacks: an Afro-american Perspective. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, Inc. W ilson, A. (1992). Awaken the Natural Genius of Black Children, Brooklyn: AfriKan W orld Infosystems. W ilson, A. (1993). the Falsification of Afrikan Consciousness. Brooklyn: Afrikan W orld Infosystems. W oodson, C. G. (1991). the Education of the Negro Prior to 1861. Salem: Ayer Company, Publishers, Inc.

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