After 40 years of black studies, more whites teaching courses
Dawn Turner Trice, Chicago Tribune
Issue date: 4/15/09 Section: News
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"Years ago, it happened more," said Alexander, 38, who grew up near Rockford, Ill., and teaches at the University of Kansas. "I'd see the kids walk into my room, look down at their registration cards and up at me, and then walk out to make sure they had the right classroom."
Around the country this year, college campuses are celebrating the 40th anniversary of African-American studies programs. Although black scholars make up the majority of the faculty, white scholars increasingly are making their mark, including two teaching at Northwestern University.
It may be the ultimate in inclusion as well as irony in a discipline that emerged out of the Black Power movement of the late 1960s to challenge "the man" and the white status quo. If African-American history looks back at the black experience, African-American studies tries to examine it from the inside out and from every angle.
White scholars have pursued doctorates in African-American history in relatively large numbers; but whites with doctorates in black studies as well as those who teach in the field remain fairly rare.
Martha Biondi, an associate professor of African-American studies and history at Northwestern University, said she believes her racially mixed group of students places far more stock in her passion for her craft than the fact that she's white.
"There probably are students who wouldn't enroll in a black studies course with a white professor," said Biondi, 44, whose doctorate is in African-American history. "But it's my view that students are incredibly open-minded. They may at first say, 'I wonder if this person is qualified,' but students want a teacher who performs well, and, at the end of the day, that's how they'll judge you."
From the beginning, the goal of African-American studies-with its immersion in black culture, literature, history, politics and religion-was to critique and strengthen social justice policies for people of African descent worldwide.
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