Black Studies

Black Studies
and
The Study of
Blackness

This page will present a series of essays on black
studies and the study of blackness, updated on a
more or less monthly basis, from the forthcoming
anthology, Rebels without a Name: Selected
Essays in Black Studies and the Study of
Blackness.

1969

The Black Anglo-Saxons     1962
   Walk into any large city in the United States and look for that
section where more than 90 per cent of the population is native
born. When once you have found that section, you may safely
assume that you re smack dab in the Negro ghetto. Ask the
names of the people you meet, and you will note that the Anglo-
Saxon names now extant---Jackson, Brown, and Johnson---are
pretty much the property of the Negro inhabitants.
   This is just one of the cues to the identity of a curious but little-
known class---“Black Anglo-Saxons”---now flourishing in
American society. If you now proceed until you come to the
“better” Negro dwellings (known as the homes of the “high class”
or the “biggity”), you will find yourself at last amid the Black Anglo
Saxons proper, though not all of the “high class” belong to this
tribe.
   Black Anglo-Saxons are such chiefly in that, in their natural
struggle to throw off the smothering blanket of social inferiority,
they exaggeratedly seek to sever their own historical and social
past in order better to assume that of the biological descendants of
the Anglo-Saxons.They relate to and long to be a part of, the
elusive and hostile white world, whose norms are taken as models
of emulation. Likewise, the white world is to them a looking glass
for taking stock of their personal behavior. They acquire in this
way what sociologists call a “looking glass self,” an image they
must keep on grooming, to make what they think the white society
thinks they are in accord with what they themselves would like to
be: more and more like whites.
   For several years now, in diverse localities throughout the
country, I have been subjecting members of this group to casual
but intensive observation. I have watched them, close up, in their
private lives (for many were and are close friends, relatives and
neighbors) as well as in public places. From both the private and
the public perspective, I discovered that Black Anglo-Saxons fall
into typical categories:

The Image-makers. Image-makers are dithered by their belief
that all Negroes have to do to break down discrimination is
impress the white community with proper public manners and the
sincerity of the negroes’ quest for integration. They are constantly
fearful lest whites think they are prejudiced against whites or have
a preference for Negro companionship.   Thus, it is more or less
mandatory for Negroes to spread out, when in an integrated
gathering, to keep whites present from thinking “we segregate
ourselves.”
   Points of worry for image makers may crop up in many facets
of their lives. While such groups as Italians boast of their spaghetti
and meatballs, for example, Negro image-makers may privately
consume huge quantities of low-in-come Southern foods but
disown the practice in public. Many image-makers will never buy
watermelons when white persons are in sight, and I have seen
them sit in restaurants, mouths watering at unsuspecting whites
seated before large, red slices of melon, which the image-makers
long for but can’t bring themselves to buy.
   Chitterlings likewise are a basis for hypocrisy. Although some
of the best chitterlings still are to be found in Negro kitchens, the
Black Anglo-Saxon housewife typically seeks to hide her appetite
for them. Most take extreme pains to safe guard knowledge of
their menu from neighbors. This is especially so in integrated
apartment dwellings. Such other staples as mustard greens and
black-eyed peas also are privately enjoyed but publicly shunned
before whites.

The Mimics, or Copycats. Close kin of the image-makers,
mimics are especially prevalent among school teachers and white
collar workers. They chronically mimic white mannerisms in the
quest for a feeling of similarity or closeness to their white ideal. A
“white accent,” for example, is to them honorific, because it is
taken to represent a high degree of association with the “better
class” of whites. In the effort to “talk like a white person,” mimics
effect a snarl or twang imitative of whites when talking publicly or
to strangers, though, if you listen long enough you are likely to hear
an “I” pronounced “ah,” plus other tell-tale signs of their lowly
Southern origins.
   This enthusiasm for aping white behavior pervades the most
personal intimacies of their lives. Married mimics, for example,
are prone to hold up white men or white women as ideals to their
mates. When a male mimic’s wife does something that bothers
him, he is likely to tell her “wouldn’t nothing do that but a colored
woman.” By the same token, when a female mimic is peeved by
her spouse, she also talks about his heredity or makes the
declaration that his “type” is “no account” in general anyway.

The Cultured. With the increasing value of education in society
and the rising educational attainment of Negroes, the importance
of the college degree has soared to the highest. Some social
scientists detect a “degree class,” those individuals who derive
their prestige from the sole fact that they hold degrees. But
inasmuch as such persons typically are employed as school
teachers, social workers, and church pastors, their salaries are
often lower than such uneducated negroes as the steel mill hands.
This leads to some dilemmas and resentments. Every janitor, for
example, has found it necessary, at some time or another, to “tell
off” some of the “high class tenants,” for trying to “boss him
around.”
   The degree class is seldom interested in scholarly matters,
however, except superficially. Books, in fact, would seldom enter
their homes, were it not for book-of-the-month clubs. Even this is
no guarantee that the books will be read. Yet, those of the home-
owning variety are beginning to acquire “studies” (usually
equipped with plush bar facilities, relaxing couch, and a small
book stand conspicuously placed and containing a couple of
shelves of textbooks salvaged from college days). The chief
activities performed in these “studies” are drinking, “cat naps” and
lounging (called “relaxing”), in that order.
   At a typical house party of ‘educators,” a budding discussion
will quickly disperse the inhabitants of one room into another,
where they may resume their efforts to learn the latest teenage
dance crazes, such as, the Madison, the Twist, and the cha-cha-
cha. It is true that the twist has demonstrated some capacity for
arousing the energies of most negro and white adults, but its
acceptance by the whites is taken by the Black Anglo-Saxon as
an irreproachable justification for his own enthusiasm.
   Black Anglo-Saxons are quick, however, to profess a passion
for the “cultured” things of life, especially the aesthetic. Thus, they
require little provocation to let you know that they hardly ever
listen to blues, or “that monkey music,” but rather go in for
“symphonies,” which they collect from mass record clubs and
place on the top of their record stacks. Underneath, hidden from
immediate view, lurk the more groovy numbers such as Big Joe
Turner’s “Hi Yo Silver.”
   Some music major friends of mine once gave a party for some
classmates on a tour with their alma mater’s choir. Naturally, an
impressive stack of long-playing symphonic recordings led off the
music fare.
   But at last, as the guests sighed with boredom amid strains of
Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, the main hostess privately
bemoaned to me the somber mood of the party and her apparent
failure as a hostess.
   I inched over to the phonograph, reached under the stack and
pulled our Little Richard’s “Slippin and Slidin” whereupon the
party came to life. Music majors and all forgot their fugues and
counterpoint to pop their fingers and stomp their feet in
uncontrollable ecstasy. However, many of them remarked that
that was the first time they had ever heard of Little Richard.

The Sociable. Because black Anglo-Saxons, like most other
Negroes, are severely restricted in the extent that they are allowed
to be active in the organized life of American society, social
participation tends to become an end in itself. Consequently, even
most civic groups become mere recreational associations, having
as their main function the “throwing” of “annual balls,” “spring
formals,” and the like, where members and selected guests parade
in rented and borrowed “tails” and “formals.”
Individuals feel compelled to appear “sociable” for fear of losing
status in the group, and I have known couples to get divorces
because, as they said, one or the other was “not sociable enough.”

The Secluded. Bounced back by the wall of segregation, Black
Anglo-Saxons compensate by decreasing their proximity to the
regular Negro world. This separation is in terms of both spatial
and social distance. Ministers contend that as many Negroes
move up educationally and begin to prosper financially, their
religious fervor wanes accordingly. Eventually, many find
themselves uncomfortable in the highly expressive congregations of
the Negro masses. Consequently, as sociologist E. Franklin
Frazier was quoted once as saying, they are “running from the
Baptist to the Congregationalist and the Bahai, trying to find some
place where people don’t know they’re colored.”
   One frequently encounters the saying: “Deliver me from the
average Negro.” Parents seek to shield young children from
knowledge of racial reality, often going so far as to spell out
references to race: “Was she a N-E-G-R-O?” Or, An old W-H-
I-T-E man really made me mad today.” Thus many are able to
grow up and take pleasure in the boast that they never knew there
was a difference made between Negroes and whites until they
“got grown” or reached the age of, say, 15 or was “going on 16.”
In general, the secluded seem to think that the sooner they forget
they are Negroes, the sooner whites will too.
   The foregoing are by no means all of the categories, but all have
in common an almost pathetic clamor to gain acceptance in the
general American society. Perhaps, subsequent to the day when
this has been accomplished, the “Black Anglo-Saxon” too will
disappear from the North American scene.

-- by Nathan Hare. Reprinted from Negro Digest, May, 1962
.______

TO BE CONTINUED:
From the forthcoming Anthology,om the
forthcoming Anthology, Rebels Without a
Name: Selected Essays in Black Studies and
the Study of Blackness

Appearing in the February 10, 1969 issue of
Newsweek in the middle of the five-months strike for
black studies at San Francisco State was an essay by
Dr. Nathan Hare, typed out on a small lap-held
portable Underwood in the strike headquarters of the
"White House" (the second floor of the Ecumenical
House that wore white paint and stood across the
street from the entrance to the campus). The
Newsweek editors titled it "The Case for Separatism"
in concession to the opposition statement, "The Case
Against Separatism," by Roy Wilkins, then National
Executive Secretary of the NAACP (National
Association for the Advancement of Colored
Peoples). Mr. Wilkins's opposition to the idea of black
studies was based on his belief that black studies was
separatist, although he expressly endorsed the
"teaching of black history and culture" in his
statement! Wilkins also seemed to ignore the blatant
fact that white student and faculty protesters were
predominant in the daily noonday rallies of the black
student-led strike of faculty and students numbering
in the hundreds and sometimes thousands, including
the day the police tactical squad surrounded the rally
and stealthily encircled, captured and arrested a stark
diversity of five hundred and fifty-seven individuals
who had been unable to flee or escape the police
dragnet operating under an impromptu ad hoc
declaration of "martial law" and arresting hapless
students and professors on such charges as unlawful
assembly, failing to disperse and disturbing the
peace."
   Dr. Hare had stated six years before that day (in
an article called "The Negro's Escape from Freedom"
published in Negro Digest) that "integration and
separation may both be promising means to the end
of elevation and empowerment of a people, but they
lose their effectiveness when they become full ends in
themselves." "It will be an irony of recorded history,"
the sociologist went on to observe, "that segregation
was used to hold us down in the first half of the
century but integration, or its tokenistic ideals, will be
used to hold us down in the second half." In regards
to black studies itself he would soon go on to remark
upon the paradox that a separatist-flavored cry for
black studies had brought more black students and
faculty to white campuses in three or four years than
three or four decades of bootless integrationist cries.
_______
The Case for Black Studies
   “Appalling” is the only word I know that begins to
describe the sneaky way in which critics like Roy
Wilkins accuse us of “separatism.” Our cries for more
black professors and black students have padded
white colleges with more blacks in two years than
decades of whimpering for “integration” ever did.
We blacks at white colleges remain associated with
racists physically, although we seek social and
psychological independence from their oppression.
The Amos ‘n’ Andy administrators at Negro colleges,
by contrast, are physically separated but
accommodated to their dependence on white racism
as well as the establishment’s remote control of their
black identity.
   Blacks who teach at white colleges have argued
long and bitterly over course content and instructor
assignments with white departmental chairmen of
various shades of racist persuasions. They would
rather have a white moderate professor with a Ph.D.
teaching a history sequence starkly barren of
blackness than a black man without a degree who
has spent long hours in research on the subject.
They hold up the white Ph.D.’s publications in
learned journals, unmindful of the fact that a black
man doing research, for example, on the slavery era
in “learned journals” is obliged to footnote slave-
master historians or historians acceptable to a society
which then condoned black slavery. Second –rate
colleges require black persons with functionally white
minds, using the Ph.D as one tested means of
policing that policy, yet at the same time, first-class
universities think nothing of hiring an unschooled
Eric Hoffer, who now holds forth at Berkeley.
   With regard to course content, the white aim is
mainly to black out the black perspective. White
professors at universities such as Yale will dust off
old courses in race relations and African tribalism for
what might be called a polka-dot studies program,
while Negro professors will trot out their old courses
in Negro history and Negro music for Negro-studies
courses which they cynically call black. If all a black-
studies program needs is a professor with a black
skin to prattle about Negro subject matter, then our
Negro schools would never have failed so painfully as
they have.
   In the search for educational relevance, black
today is revolutionary and nationalistic. A black-
studies program which is not revolutionary and
nationalistic is, accordingly, quite profoundly
irrelevant.
[Webmaster's Note: Dr. Hare was writing in the Black Power stage of
the movement for black revolutionary change in the United
States at the end of The Sixties and in the particular context of the
historic five-month black-student-led strike for black studies with the
support of a predominant coalition of the students and faculty of all
races on the campus, including but not limited to the American
Federation of Teachers, the Students for a Democratic Society, the
Third World Liberation Front and the Black Faculty Union].
   The black revolutionary nationalist, aware and proud of his
blackness, demands the right to exist as a distinct category,
to be elevated as such by any means necessary. The Negro,
contrarily, would just as soon be white. He longs to escape his
blackness and, in the search for integration, achieves
disintegration.
   Thus, the key to the difference between a black-studies
program and a Negro-studies program is a black perspective.
Black students are descendants of a people cut off from their
attachment to land, culture and nation (or people-hood). This
condition is aggravated further by a whitewashed
education.     The expansive phase of the black-studies
program is designed to regenerate the mortified ego of the
black child. For instance, a proud black history can restore
and construct a sense of pastness, of collective destiny, as a
springboard to the quest for a new collective future. For black
children crippled by defeatist attitudes, hardened by
generations of exclusion, this is potentially therapeutic.

PRAGMATIC COMPONENT
   At the same time, we must resist the white perspective
which seeks to restrict black studies to the stereotyped study
of art and religion predominantly. Black studies should
comprise a comprehensive, integrated body of interdisciplinary
courses just as in the case of long-established departments of
social science and American studies. There is a desperate need
for a pragmatic component which focuses on the applied fields
of knowledge such as economics.
   Many will argue that science and mathematics are “pure”
subjects; though that may be true in a sense, the uses of
science may be directed toward atomic weapons of
destruction or, in the case of a community-oriented black
studies, devoted to such matters as rat control.
I can visualize, for instance, a reading problem in “black”
mathematics that would not be saturated with middle-class
referents such as stocks and bonds. Rather, the teacher
might ask in order to whet the ghetto child’s appetite for
math: “If you loot one store and burn two, how many do
you have left?” The example might be improved; but there is
no substitute for a black perspective based on the principle of
self-control.
_______

TO BE CONTINUED:
From the forthcoming Anthology, Rebels Without a Name:
Selected Essays in Black Studies and the Study of Blackness

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