Black Studies

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• SOURCE: New York Review of Books
  6/17/2023
  

  The War on Black Studies Isn't "Culture War" – It's Part of a Long Political Battle

  by Robin D.G. Kelley

  "Who’s afraid of Black Studies? White supremacists, fascists, the ruling class, and even some liberals. As well they should be. Black Studies was born out of a struggle for freedom and a genuine quest to understand the world in order to change it."

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• SOURCE: The Atlantic
  2/14/2023
  

  The Book that Launched Black Studies Was a Challenge to Classroom Racism

  by Ibram X. Kendi

  Education historian Jarvis Givens discusses a 90th anniversary edition of Carter Woodson's pathbreaking "The Mis-Education of the Negro," noting that the book was banned in Oklahoma for being "antiklan" in its efforts to overturn the pervasive message of Black inferiority in the established school curriculum. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  2/3/2023
  

  Conversation: Why is AP Taking Activism Out of African American Studies?

  Historians Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor and Robin D.G. Kelley discuss the roots of African American Studies in civil rights activism, which makes the decision to de-emphasize contemporary movements like Black Lives Matter inexplicable and diminishes the power of the course to help students make sense of the society.

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  2/1/2023
  

  A Reading List of Authors Removed from the AP African American Studies Course

  The College Board has made revisions to its pilot African American Studies course that appear to follow the criticisms made by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Here's a collection of essays by many of the scholars representing diverse Black intellectual traditions whose ideas will not be part of the course going forward. 

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• SOURCE: Boston Review
  9/28/2021
  

  The Lost Promise of Black Study

  by Andrew J. Douglas and Jared Loggins

  Atlanta's Institute of the Black World struggled to negotiate its mission to theorize and document Black oppression and resistance without being captured or controlled by outside institutions, including the established historically Black colleges in Atlanta. Its history raises difficult and important questions about the relationship of universities and freedom today.

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• SOURCE: Black Perspectives
  11/9/2020
  

  The Contours of Black Studies in American Public Schools

  by Alexander Hyres

  A historian of education argues that Black studies was not an invention of the 1960s; its flawed implementation reflected the long battles Black activists fought against hostile and indifferent school administrations for decades before. 

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• SOURCE: The New Yorker
  10/19/2020
  

  How Saidiya Hartman Retells the History of Black Life

  The literary scholar Saidiya Hartman's studies of the aftermath of slavery and the African diaspora point to the limits of archival records for understanding historical Black experience. Some historians question whether her methods fill archival gaps too creatively.

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• SOURCE: New York Times
  9/11/2020
  

  James Jackson, Who Changed the Study of Black America, Dies at 76

  James S. Jackson pioneered survey methods that allowed African Americans to be studied as a group rather than in comparison to a baseline defined by whites. 

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• SOURCE: Oxford University Press Blog
  6/17/2020
  

  Black Studies For Everyone

  by Armond R. Towns

  Ongoing protest movements demonstrate that Black Studies is for everybody. The question is: how long will it take for higher education to catch up to such a realization?

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• SOURCE: NPR Codeswitch
  3/21/19
  

  The Student Strike That Changed Higher Ed Forever

  50 years ago, studying the history and culture of any people who were not white and Western was considered radical.