A Thematic Approach to Black Studies, Part 2

the institute for black studies and inquiry by and for teachers into the history culture literature art and social relationships of black people today dr henry a book discusses a thematic approach to black studies in the last lecture i attempted to lay the foundation for the concept of a thematic method of teaching that i have in mind and which concept will tend to act comedy the interests and aspirations a modern youth i tried to indicate first and foremost that the thrust for teaching black studies actually affords affords an opportunity for american public education to become re constructionist this probably is the first time in the history of american education that such an

opportunity has been offered i've tried to indicate to that those teachers who would seek to take advantage of this chance will face two basic problems on syndromes that one is a problem of objectivity and the other it's a problem of our presenters and now it is my contention that it is an evil wind that rose nobody good that these problems though they appear pathological nature are dangling before us certain strategies which we can employ to take advantage of them and put them in service for the enhancement are other learning process at this lecture i want to indicate that that can be done by means of the thematic approach

diplomatic approach offers to student and teacher an opportunity to solve all kinds of controversies that tune to come up in the emotional nature of black studies i would give you an example of a controversy for instance when you reach if you have not read yet why not that slavery you'll find a very interesting treat is dealing with among other things the white abolitionists it is and excellence that we are off abolitionism into an offer but look like that like calls out kitchen to the fact that abolitionists were a bit racist and that when the question came as to the degree to which blacks could join

whites in the anti slavery movement the purity white abolitionists became tainted work that make it a lack is clear about this and makes a black wonder whether or not the funniness of whites as he thinks he's encountering now and probably is in many instances has historical death so a student will quickly tell you that i can't trust white people and therefore they cannot become legitimate make up part of the new and more militant civil rights movement

i use a diplomatic approach in the area of strategic various flavored one contest this out one can expose himself at japan and even his students through this study that benjamin court has just released called the black abolitionist now what quarter does here is to indicate the role of black leaders in abolition our movement under an anti slavery for us that was separate but coordinating with the whites it is excellently written both of these findings and tend to afford a teacher with source materials and factual reinforcement that will

allow him with all confidence and safety to leave his students into the area of this controversy a teacher can only students to become very personal about this what did go well and the same was true of these men were rather serious abolitionist and that black indicates mean i did oh well did apologize for associated with whites i mean with blacks they did sort of feel that if they went to a black wedding they were not breaking cast with a black abolitionist painful white way that they were breaking tax so the student could have some ground for a suspicion of racism

on the part of these white americans that i heard it so high and black history as sen having been extremely liberal that why does quote black abolitionist the white abolitionists i should say who say but the bad but back at the night the better of the abolitionists they are you can lead the student for that in his inquiry about this all around with the abolitionist as a stimulus negative positive races or nine races as a frame of reference one can lead to an exploration of this thesis into the area of education itself when so many descendants of abolition every

invaded the south just after the civil war and helped push to establish the preteens who system and many of the black colleges that exist now out this is another another star which we believe one other day but one can make this type of test could give you another example many teachers have tended to use and rightly so the various instances of interaction as evidence that blacks did not foreign of slavery and that they were constantly fighting its chains pecking at them and trying to push them apart you can leave your students to explore that really but when you do you'll run smack into history books that glorify certain kinds of black leaders in the in

search an area context that really never existed in the image that some of these polls indicate that they did probably our best example is denmark be denmark dc and i saw fan in which black kids were being brainwashed with all their bright black pride in this was good i guess and they were recycling been marked the sea as a gradient interactions and wade has brought out documents in the southern his marble quarry that's sears the question whether the denmark the seed plot ever existed we need more work in that area and using a whole theme of the question of the motivation of insurrection is they will cross or nat turner some of

kate only on the spider all the rest we can't satisfy the aspirations of black and white youths who seek their heroes buy an objective sitting out of the check from me what he had just another example and then i leave this is great advantage this great flexibility of the thematic approach that our hope of their fight for that in this discussion and that is in the area of marcus garvey lectures brought to my appearance before you have dealt with marcus garvey and sort of glorified marcus garvey as a great black leader that black is beautiful a first record indicated and rightly so goes even beyond marcus garvey in time that marcus garvey did hold together

particularly in the large black people and one's talent rise of improvement of self elevation this cannot be denied but that is another page of marcus garvey that is unique for further research into the manner in which he handle the funds that were advocated from poor black people and history will do the same not only for marcus garvey but for the national development conference people through and it is my contention that no teacher has any right how ever like he sympathizes with the aspirations of the black students find pride in its heritage no right to close the top of

that a lot of inquiry from the black student about his past i think the thematic approach loosen set featured air force an opportunity makes it logical awful lot of the key to that that as instructional program to accommodate this brutal facto dimension of history and what about the case of parents call my kitchen so who is holland's wife kyra is an excellent book only quality of education these are some themes that he has suggested that they merely topics negro soldier i will show you the psychological principle up on which it's based this content and i submit to you now and that is that though it is no doubt in

the english language it isn't fun strupp it's fabulous and it does not mean the same thing to everybody negro soldier by had one graduate student who wrote an excellent term paper dealing with the history of a black american in america was with special emphasis upon the spanish american law he wasn't a retired air force colonel he'll file period military records he had an intense background as his military advice based upon his military career he worked with black soldiers bought ferraris in the korean campaign he worked under some and there was some who worked under him the head of the pancreas and now how did he say they grow so they're he saw a negro soldier in terms of a black experience which as a result

of the wild bees are some people that reason that comes out a war rizzo and i should say and emancipation of these people so negro soldier routine was any mensa taking force that turned around and kicked that the test will holland indicates negro soldier in terms of progressive the now of person revolutionary war i hang up about whether night the tickets haven't won at twelve i hang up about whether night because they the same for the civil war not the colorful worldwide that your question at what level only carrying the nation's only is servicers a weapon so here's frame of reference it's a long list we could do the same thing for urban mayors

urban isn't black history some historians have tended to make an analysis the black experience in urban life as being one thing in real life espionage so they've concentrated avenues of our own proscription against an around the mouth that inherent in urban life wade is very good is that thing but there are other ways of looking at their business as related to black history as related to black social knowledge now which as related to like poetry which would indicate the second one could look at urban areas as a series of traumatic experiences for blacks who will as a result of the great exodus is moved into lake city

one can look at it that way if one did he originate the arab league that way it when did he originate like politics that way the mail last week is that there are many ways of looking at a really isn't as it relates to the fact this non progressive isn't partners in the local be dealing with that day thanks to all perform in june in which he thinks that one can explore the whole area of the black experience through the framework that through the frame of reference that it was a movement from one parish to another from one experience to another wild in social mobility population was dance theater many progressives i would not accept that for immigration and i would not accept it

i would not accept it because and i'm not right because i'm saying i sincerely believe that one can magically possum out and divide the black experience in terms of the anthropologist frame of reference a passage to that passage is human hassett is universal as a specialist in literature or looks for universal in men's emotions a specialist in sociology of the social sciences looks for universal in men's behaviour and this is why for in all cultures where it down by mankind exists in one eye society

he does pro flag a means but which an individual can go from one kind of status to another we will play upon that with some detail in another discussion when indeed he has you have a passage by moving from the mood of the mother to the world of the society and we have a number three can go with some religious groups' a very strict about that confirmation from childhood adolescence you know the many analysts who writes that is so beautiful and other cultures from adolescence to adulthood but this especially now eight people whether exist then side by side with another people in a colonial context as what's beginning of black white

relations in the world really a people then goes through passages through or path that they too have passages whether we refer to them as rights or not whether we see them as going through certain rituals bring the change about they do have vested and that passage could be from birth to death that passage could be a ritual birth if you rachel are there now what are these passages one of these passages first there was an established

culture we'll say in which blacks insisted we will pause on that i think we're all of us know it into the piano though no other persian san onofre into slavery so so far in historical context we can say that shade from one to toe was a passage from one kind of state of existence to another time and there is because from sue everett to segregation was actually a passage from one candidate says let's to another time now it is important to place emphasis

upon tyne because it is not just a difference in maine it is aid your friends even though at the individual was allowed to grow up the pile up and share in the general social order and another dimension was that changed that it imposed upon the individual making the passage upon the population make in the past changing from slavery to segregation was a change and priest in pro sports since it was a change in the requirements of the individual for his existence in the general society it was therefore in the third instance a requirement that the end of april to drop his adjustment here and create new techniques of adjustment

here and one can see that also in this fourth period which is the period as desegregation another kind of requirement for another kind of life and landay the one where we are now at a nation there was a mirror that one actually could approach and analysis of the black experience from the point of view that taken out of an established coach it important of the bondage and made a son but i picked a unit of a general society the

individual that they've released and made supper from the general society to constitute a biracial one and that there were certain advantages in in this that he lost here but the keys i will be able to show later on if you let me far outweighed these and actually created this so that my children and the to know all of those who represent the so called black middle class could enjoy the left syria of alienation i submit that this is not known for aggressive and that you've we don't draw a particular kinds of themes we can object and through him

very well documented evidence show but the life cycle of a black american in the american society has not been an impressive this would be another way of looking at the whole question of progressive this and now you should one day by what right away right do i encourage you to have your students toss around a topic like slavery or like segregation like desegregation or like soldier negro soldier in the others you're like abolitionist wavy out or outright to i have you know i have to ask you to have his duties do that in the hope that they will come up with a creative path down with vacant for outdoor top objective isn't in spanish oh right

thats what i've wanted a nation it civilized it on the basis of the psychological principle of doctoring and i wanna show you how it works now the basic the basic idea about the way your mind operates the way a child's mind the children you teach you in their minds operate the way or in the line of all the human beings operate the basic idea is that two nobody you know human organism is a stimulus an option and it is always a relative it is always a relative so we'll call ins and it will come to the stuff you put on the bible of this printed page here reads the words you say will come to him as

a stimulus to one of the senses the greater the number of senses you involved in it the radar is a learning process the army taught us that a war what to learning is in direct proportion to the number of senses we bring into play but that stimulus funds to him through its finances into his mind ms bruno that stimulus is something out there that i'm going to call it someone it's something out there is someone being that's out there but that one thing that's out there is embedded in something else that's out there and then called it sad too and those two things out that time it was something else that's out there and i'm appalled at the theory and all that stuff is in turn tied up with a

lot of other stuff out there with john mccauley the serbian going to really think that you can fix your mind or any one thing in the studio in wales and shut out of the us for if you're shut out all the rest you shut out all for nothing exists exists outside of the configuration of the pissed officers so all of this is exponentially and the vagrant a part of that stimulus but at the same time that stuff isn't hitting up my mind you know i mean the church has unveiled before he met you before you hurt your worries and if my experiences have had an effect on his mind and i'm going to call one last thing an internal fact i saw one of them might be the way you portray you know it might be the tone of your voice

it might be the color of your skin it might even be the size of the press on the book he has previous live show prompted some sort of feeling state to it therefore the i am i sublime and i said to you and i said three and i said and i said you all are represented the subjective environment of the individual and nobody walks around the void i mean nobody walks around and what happens in the subway in mixes with ice survey and to create psychological struck during a structure that comes out in the form of a response in athens of tripoli we don't know that nice and met everybody does this and that it

dangled before us trained members of leeds glen hanson irony give an example and so that would make this not really added isis do this question which rescue show one have children after thirty five that is the question and that's the stimulus and his answer was no thirty five why enough that sentence by eleven that i want in the classroom with the idea that i was going to each human fertility in terms of aid to show must do that all these people who are young people having children look how well they can grow up with i'm not like a huge difference but he wasn't that

wasn't his meat i got from that steely one of the best papers dealing with the history of the american birth control movement that i've ever had from an undergrad no i yes i can sneak tip is internal environment with doing was concerned with the population explosion that was his interest do what he did use in the frame of reference using the frame of reference that high birth rate but due to this insecurity women see that a due to the insecurity women he was able to trace the history of the birth control movement from france's base of appeal and i didn't have to push him into the live or i didn't have been giving

references of anything that's what in fact he taught me some solutions than a pile of psychological stress that just didn't think they can do but there is another path of another partner digital mates the thematic approach it with caught up into the body of their new show and a very interesting article referred to head the perception or sell it if i get another city on any of the episodes subject in nam well his book and that principle is that a youngster always sees causation in apathy get to it you don't have to say look john tie up anc adopted poll that really given a chance and he would do it too well for

instance let me give the most patience of that but these days and you know for me i'm here with these places with them rates on child psychologist to take children to the museum and they go in this great tune you know this beautiful frog and they'd walk through the museum and they got the bag because it was near one day they were behind and the teacher took them in the back and the kid said no these of the final steps he had already conception that you'd already conception as a difference between the front and the back they were things of functions the show exposed to subjects who animated objects on a slot on a track that will movable and one of his experiment let's say he head

to audits are not that day and it ought to be anointed was animate them and using that they're mad at deceptive approach an artist is subject to write or tell stories about what was happening and hod world for months of the year for me with him to that magic up deceptive test it exposes people two of their highly structured picture to look beautiful photograph you won't see prostitutes the abbot that thematic episode that what we call that skill and that so they were they up here other highly structured it looks like the show the pilot everything and then they as young spirit people subject to write a story about that because what has happened what has happened now how it will come out this is a means by which we cause the end of it the psychologist calls of the individual to project the internal his subject as state than anyone not want to be known at all of

course your job at a price tag of this structure well this was similar to that that now let's manipulate these let's take eight on this track and moving toward b now when the project is moving toward the year wrap it and then eight is cause then beat the moon but if he creates projects and now the one that animation and allows aid to move so lonely and i indicate the speed ballet link that there are with somali poet b and instead of these moving out here and he is going to

hand it be an ar dewine and then move out here then beat is carrying a fantasy and the movement is operating the same train the only factor that i've been very is the speed at which they move toward the sun they move toward the fashion becomes a causal forth it becomes active in a move toward the celtic it becomes their passive because we're eating into law at a nonstop you're really situation causation this is tremendous this has a tremendous value in pg now you tell me i teach high school students and they can do this they came from frank deford thinking i can pin that babies do it we just don't have a million and i think quite heavy really at harvard

and he has some fascinating evidence that this was our pa as represented in the movements and the action of youngsters over our love letter say of motivations that the young see himself is constantly generating that you ate three ounces do this well i work with some i really wasn't working with them i was relating to them i purposely put all my lawn these four items that i knew the six year sentence a real youngsters would eventually come in common they didn't they find them so then i had a table by a lounge chair and i just put them on the table and one would come and pick up this coast in and then another would pick up the

state and among pickup that and then one can emerge to dominate the use of these items and a soulful thought about it but later a youngster war this is save the guest artist all right nobody react to his and ramekins segments he always reaction to polls and he puts these holes together in ways that are meaningful to him and bad bad day most of the flawed a creative teacher the very sensitive teacher a tremendously powerful teaching device he can put things together in holes now you refer to interested in could we

oh yes the job and do it now can we utilize this to come to grips with some of the problems of many of us black students while on probation so i should indeed need to address one thrust both thrusts were designed to prove or test the idea for a reference and now that a student's academic record is not an exact indication of visibility say and i'll get his frame of reference you know the zero point zero zero you know great point three or three point scale it's from nowhere and sawyer a lot for the wants well a teacher said he can't read and when the printed page is

close to him and then he's in trouble i contended that he could be reasonable point of view you know at all that is an up and down it and that is a good and a bad so you look at it this way and the leader i can get another way it and say which is right on to expose it to important tests so i had i had noticed this i did notice that in reading into chapters in introductory sociology and reuse the same text that misuse direction that i'm a very different and a broom in his associate it would give up that factional with my picture said it's too hard for them but i noticed this that when mr chet the double something pertaining to black this you were always annoyed no matter how complex it was in the matter what its degree of complexity you would know that better than he would know the other stuff that was sort of easy

so this told me that probably operating in a students' ability to do reading comprehension is the fact all of you need so we developed a classic experiment that is an experiment of the festival by way of a reading tests the reagan people had secured forth we eat pray equated to populations in reading ability now because it was a lot each population with a large population the equation with what we call on the basis of a frequency distribution equation that meant that the two populations had the same the population had the same standard deviation and the kurds one vertical terms of the technical about that is just as we have

you made two cups and they could fit together and they was not so well that you would not know the scene which party and you needed that and then with the help of the reading people and by way of what a pope toaster techniques we gave the experimental brew military oath with the same degree of complexity as they gave the non experiment to work with this exception then the tale of his experiment going to involve that in some sort of way the shuttle through but all of the outcomes of the material it pertained to the welfare or danger of black people know what she'll do

these almost exactly science of experience and you can see the difference in the air because with reading about the health cost them and type of subject matter varies according to need reading comprehension increased now we can take advantage of that in the complex that is we can teach it on the basis of a black focus and i can teach him is do anything that anyone for doctors who ordered know in sociology through his interests in the black focus do that out

of where you have to bear with me i've got to be old that's a standard course in introductory sociology and a standard course an introductory sociology is going to incorporate these features pat given that it's going to incorporate these speeches now for certain type he comes to me and he does not want to hear their time it's too complex for the bad not want to hear reward walker's theory of social stratification he does not want to involve himself right now in how did they may need social classes because he wants to go to fill what ended up in the ghetto but first i ask him where is fifth was going to say or is it and what is it like when he tells me by saying you go down to work who don't come across and you can get to my family and everyone and after i want him to

locate on a map and these maps a broken up into sensors tracked it to this tournament at american metropolitan city and i let him vote and not that but then in which the sense of fried beer that exists that bullet them would tell him a lot of things about the population the sentence and the first thing i let him do is to determine what proportion of the people made sense of dry up like their better if bp and this is one of their four one senses track to another and he can separate the quantities of variation in plastic bottles anything give each flask into what color and pasted on a map and right away he delineates the war neither what kind of place is this in that same boat and he can be joe what proportion of the drought and i badly in need of repair he can veto that he can veto what the average recovery is

he can be told what proportion of the people who employed in that track have a working at certain out they flew out of all of that sort of let him go and he comes back with maps and then a set one day just before the class started looking over the map and i wasn't on a loan that's about the same and the urban you too and then there is a large ally will you tell me what you mean and i when i put one up money and then i come up with what i come up with the same areas and so he learned that certain types of characteristics tended to go with certain types of community structures within the city where the blacks the infamous over the wire was for the blacks and so forth and so on or done howl or done by virtue

of then they fact that the individual is seeking to observe culture knowledge a lot of your socialization social structure and moving from now on in terms of work in terms of his sect his aspirations about non black people and you think of anything more now this means that he emerges with a standup was in sociology and at the same time it emerges with a kind of a satisfaction of the desperate but now with their mating time let me turned to teaching fact that it's this way not teach him with the black focus but teaching where the medical but not if you look down your cheek you one of their going out of it is you would observe that certain themes now the first one is the personalization

i can teach all five often than one can see these units of black history on the basis of this thing and that is the us bravo of the black american against the personalization what i can do this it the night progresses non progressive isn't notice a double negative i can be nine non progressive isn't and i can feel that oral history is no matter about who all the letters written is an analysis of men's organization or enterprise and i can utilize the dynamics of that organization an enterprise to trace the process of the emancipation of the black american audience in those cases that you met students who aren't it's

interested in majoring in history and who want to know and have aspirations about history our graffiti and i don't notice that in some of these three books they read them nothing about blacks if you're telling them about now he can take the whole area of black history and matted up was dictated points in american history and its brand the knowledge of american history this is the way it will eventually be taught me has to teach who don't believe in the system they say it's funny i couldn't let him pursue their interests by the theme that american democracy has two faces and he would tell me that he was a lovely one and he knows he gets so that there are ways of doing that the same thing with regard to

the american enterprise and pretension about conserving its human resources he can take the theme that was popularized in a book about the pool that we referred to a few police departments in the entire history of the black american as a result of his set exposure to the black experience will show the wasted and there i really don't know i really don't know what the survey was still who are so good at making smoke or steam engines what he would have been eighty not been handicapped by the limitations of his bondage i don't even know really what i would have been had i not been limited by the color of my skin and nobody

knows what if i would have i had a student who became interested in this deal in fact that it from him but the black american's wasted because you're ready in my book and farm upriver reference to it a statement made by a yankee teacher who had come to teach in the friedman school system right after the civil war she had the prom it's salt is marred by their readiness with which these children who had just come out of slavery could take two but classical new england's movies and that the yankees tomorrow and pauls upon the backs of the cell and she made this statement how wonderful would have been their natures had they been

exposed to a lot of cultures he was carried away with that in his mind began to track what would my father had been and what would i have been had i been exposed to american culture he gave me that feeling and you can make your own what majors students make them for you know when i meet with you again i would like to play on a few of these things as one to play on our going there will be times when i will be in a minor key and every time to now be in a major key taken this seat again i would illustrate what i'm talking about

i once thought would be personalization and tried to indicate the kind of content that would be involved in a beautiful slavery where the personalization is that the it would be the theme then that the slave experience with the personalized now if i shouldn't do that then i will have to go into roh sociology you'll have to bear with me on that because the whole concept of the person they snapped the world i will have done luke and african background and i will say some instances a monthly pass it as they go and the black response during that time but all of that will be in terms of the personalization now keep in mind that when i do it that way i won't lose some important facts in the history of slavery

i can pick up those facts by shift in the end going to hit the water his age and when i do that i will bring the state and particularly at the college know to a confrontation with that that's what the tenenbaum elkins thesis nepal in parma talk about the thesis in terms of the idea that opens in north of us about native estate because they were going by what they called prescribed and not by the way that people reacted to the pro naturally then i could do just the opposite i'm our organization the eye could go on the base is solved

they idea that what happened to billy bragg says slavery extended not up on the rig is that a proof that about the slave girl but the belgians that resulted from practice the second tape around in doing that i can also call to the students' attention that you'll be focused book on slavery and just dance book the peculiar institution represent not a pot not any faults and the correct fact what both facts growing out our differences in frames of reference that forced him he was looking at the rigors of the state for philip he was looking at the soft spots

and both went there and we can put them to work as an academic pursue that will get the student out of all of this is the weekend that because of the close knit one thing i wanted to remember their piece that reality is not fixed it is highly dependent on make it consistent with the vantage point for me to do it i would never made so conscious of that then when i read believes human destiny he imagines two pieces of drill one white the other black these rates them into two parts of dallas and the next season and he as suppression what do we have and most people will say one grape and to read would say

that that is what it is to you but to a micro it is one that you won when you after another it all depends upon your baggage on the manic teaching then on mouse to spin to pursue the true within the framework of his own emotional needs while at the same time not right in the risk of be an untrue of the nonfiction it emphasizes of clothes because i don't know what your aspirations for years but i know what my i'm not making a black man and making a sociologist i would be making a black

the mob or face and making at the top of this and i cannot surrender matt or so in understanding the way human beings behave in social order as for the sake of building up racial pride or ego i think we ought to have it i think we must have it but i think also that we must allow the youngster trips more his potentials uninhibited by race whether it be eleven interest to racism against him or replace it a new kind of racism of his party against somebody else there's sit before

us an element that sociologists potential sun so bright that they had to literally teach i don't want those kids i don't want to and then i said security in that conversation i think it's the institute for black studies it sponsored by the department of history and the american studies program at the university of texas director of the institute is dr henry a book senior the institute is made possible through grants from the national endowment for the humanities and the home foundation television production is made possible by a grant from the then ford foundation to the texas education or microwave project the series was produced and facilities off communication center university of texas